National Park: Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

A quick visit to Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore was all that was needed to check off the 3rd and final park in Indiana. The other two on the Indiana list were George Rogers Clark National Historic Site and the Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home. We visited Indiana National Dunes on the way back to Indy from Chicago in early April. We had gone to Chicago for the Robert Plant concert and to see some friends do a road race. As it turns out, said friends had gotten engaged at the Dunes so we decided we must go to check out this park on the way home. Not only was this a National Park, it held sentimental value to our speedy pals. On their suggestion we decided to stick with a quick hike up Mount Baldy, the exact location of his proposal.

The trip to the park was a relatively short one, it is about 45-60 minutes outside of Chicago, and I was a bit confused at first because there is a state park that abuts (or if one gets particular about it, enclosed by) the national park. There are also steel mills dotting the highway leading to the entrance, there is a very large railroad running along the highway that leads to the park. One of the biggest companies in the world, Arcelor Mittal has a mill near the park. It seems so strange that the park is so close to this much industry. However, once you get past the steel mills and enter the park, you might as well be days from Chicago. There are about 15 miles of shoreline along Lake Michigan, with some really impressive beaches. It was too cold to go swimming that day, but it would have been refreshing on this Memorial Day 2011 (the day I write this we topped 90 degrees in Indy). The view of the water at Indiana Dunes was gorgeous! Who knew this existed in the Midwest?

Mount Baldy is probably the most popular part of the park. A short 10 minute hike gets you to the top, the dune stands about 126 feet tall, and it moves over time with the weather. The day we went was clear albeit a little windy, but the view of the water was stunning. There was a big downside though, it was right next to a power plant that looked so industrial next to this natural beauty. The drop off from the dune into the water was just majestic, but you look over to the East and there is this massive power plant tower. I decided not to take pictures of that because I didn't want to be reminded of it later.

In this park there is lots of stuff  to do (and the state park is here as well). You can walk along the beach, hike many trails, hike up Mount Baldy, go camping or canoeing, there are also important ecological tours that you can take with a park guide.

All told, we were probably in the park for about 90 minutes. We had to get back to Indy as you lose an hour on that drive, so we could only make a quick trip the park's visitor's center. I found an enchanting exhibit there on some of the artwork/advertising that was used to attract Chicagoans to the Dunes during the early 20th century.

The gallery of prints promoted the train from Chicago to the state park at the Dunes.

I remember seeing 1930s in one of the posters. I find old advertising fascinating, particularly these.

             

        

I know they have been available for years, but looking at them now it is as if they were taken from a time capsule or something.  

       

National Park: Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home

To my knowledge, there are 5 major National Parks dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. These 5 sites are his birthplace near Hodgenville, Kentucky, his boyhood home in Lincoln City, Indiana, the adult Lincoln home in Springfield, Illinois, the assassination site at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. There are also numerous battlefields over which he played an important role, most significantly Gettysburg, PA.

In early 2011, there was a poll suggesting that Ronald Reagan was America’s greatest president. This was probably heavily biased because the poll was taken around Dutch’s birthday and the number of respondents who took the poll were probably alive when Ronald Reagan was president therefore skewing the results. Abraham Lincoln was number 2 in this poll (Clinton was 3^rd, Obama and Bush II were both ahead of Jefferson which is shocking  to me as a UVa graduate, but I digress). Over time, most polls I have seen have put Lincoln near the top.  When you take out party affiliation, and survey independents you can see that Lincoln comes out on top.

This blog isn’t going to get into historical details, but in my view, when America was just a “teenager” Lincoln was the adult that held it together through her tantrums. Because he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth shortly after the Civil War officially ended, he was not around to see the US survive, rebuild and prosper into the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It is safe to say that Lincoln had outlined the principles for this to happen. Many have often wondered what brought Lincoln into this position of steadiness and discipline. There are hundreds of Lincoln biographies and articles, but one must start with his childhood and upbringing to help understand from whence this man came. This is why I think that most students of Lincoln should bypass the Lincoln Memorial and the Ford’s Theater for insight into the man, I suggest visiting the sites dedicated to the man’s life.

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky and came to Washington, D.C. as a politician from Illinois. However, (as the state of Indiana claims, confirmed by the NPS), Lincoln spent much of his formative years in Southern Indiana. About an hour’s drive from Vincennes (and the George Rogers Clark National Historic Site) lies the memorial to Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home.  The memorial is near a town called Gentryville, IN and is in the middle of nowhere. In fact, because there are not any municipalities nearby, I assume they just made its name up, Lincoln City, Indiana, for the purposes of the memorial. One can only imagine what this area would have been like without the interstate and state route nearby. It is the 21^st century and this still seems like “the frontier”.  

The park has a remarkable visitors center with extremely friendly guides. There is a 15 minute film to help get oriented to the Lincoln family tree.  Lincoln’s father, Thomas, moved to Southern Indiana because of land disputes in Kentucky. In Indiana, he was able to get a plot of land on which to farm AND because Thomas Lincoln was opposed to slavery, he preferred farming in Indiana where slavery was illegal. The area is wooded, with lots of wild animals (at the time, not now as far as I can see). This is not the original house, but a remake:

I never knew that Lincoln’s mother died of milk sickness when he was a young boy.  Milk sickness was a common ailment at the time from when cows ate snakeroot. If one consumed the milk of such a cow, it could be fatal. Her gravesite is marked with a tombstone in the park.

Thomas Lincoln remarried a widow from Kentucky brought into the family children of her own. Her name was Sarah Bush Lincoln. During his teen years, was when his thirst for knowledge was fostered by books that she had provided him and education he received in a school nearby. When Lincoln was not working on the farm, he was  reading or doing whatever he could to further his knowledge. He gained a job as a surveyor and did some work transporting goods down the river to New Orleans where he first saw slaves, this obviously made an impression on him, and impact his actions in later years.

When Lincoln was 21, his father moved the family yet again to Illinois where Abraham Lincoln would spend the next 30 years. Due to his legacy here, this plot of land became a memorial upon Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. The stones marking the actual cabin for the Lincoln family were bronzed for preservation.

There is an extremely tall (120 ft to be exact) flag pole near the visitor's center.

National Park: George Rogers Clark National Historic Site

There is an understated (and seemingly infrequently visited) National Memorial in Vincennes, IN. This town is in Southwest Indiana near the Illinois border, and the National Historic site was dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 to the honor of Col. George Rogers Clark. Without George Rogers Clark, the United States would probably not have claimed America's Northwestern Frontier from the British during the Revolutionary War.  This geographic area includes what is now the states of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. Col. Clark is best celebrated for his role in leading a rag tag and weary group of troops at a reclaimed British Fort called Sackville.

 Col. George Rogers Clark is the brother of William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame) and had an illustrious military career in his own right, but he is most celebrated for this capture of Fort Sackville and British Lt. Governor Henry Hamilton in 1779. Capturing Fort Sackville certainly was an impressive feat, but the manner in which he (and his men) did it was remarkable. The men marched through blistering cold and some icy Midwestern floodplains to fight the British, and make them surrender the fort. This effort essentially doubled the size of the United States in the coming years.

 

The memorial is much larger than it appears at a distance, and it is positioned just along the Wabash River. The site of the monument is thought to be placed roughly in the same location as Fort Sackville. There is a 30 minute movie in the visitor's center and some artifacts like maps to look over. Inside the dome, there is a large statue of Col. Clark, and Ezra Winter painted several murals that tell the story of the frontier. You can listen to an audio describing each mural.

I came to Vincennes, IN on a cloudy Saturday in November. The town is very quaint with a cute downtown of mom and pop shops. This is also the land of Lincoln with a scenic route dedicated to one of the USA's Greatest Presidents cutting right through downtown. You can cross over into Illinois (the land of Lincoln) as pedestrian over the Lincoln Memorial Bridge which was built in the same aesthetic as the Clark Memorial.