The Sand Dune Region as a National Park. 



L. F. Bennett. 



The almost unanimous popular approval given the project to make a 

 National Park in the Sand Dune region of Northern Indiana has far exceeded 

 the hopes of the most enthusiastic originators of the idea. Letters have 

 been received from people who live several hundred miles from the Dune 

 region asking what they can do to help to preserve the Dunes as a National 

 playground and park. 



Senator Taggart introduced a resolution in the Senate in which the 

 Secretary of the Interior was asked to investigate and to report to Congress 

 at its next session the desirability of establishing a National Park in the 

 Dune region. The Secretary appointed Mr. Stephen T. Mather who has 

 the National Parks of the United States under his supervision, to conduct a 

 hearing in Chicago and to investigate by a personal study the Dune area. 



The hearing was conducted October 30, 1916, in the Federal Building in 

 Chicago. There was not a dissenting voice from the twenty-five or more 

 men and women who spoke. Artists, scientists, financiers, representatives 

 of womens clubs, landowners, all were of one accord. They believed that the 

 Dune area should be saved and that it ?an best be done by the National 

 government. 



Blatchley in the 22nd Annual Report of the State Geologist says in his 

 description of the Dunes: 



"The dunes constitute the most striking and characteristic feature of the 

 shore line. They are great sand ridges, sometimes continuous for a mile or 

 more, but more often broken or cut by 'blow-outs' into isolated rounded 

 hills. The highest of these hills in Porter County is Mt. Tom, in section 12 

 (37 north, 6 west), northwest of o'd City West. Its crest is 190 feet above 

 Lake Michigan. 



Northeast of Miller's, Lake County, are a number reaching a height of 

 150 feet above the lake. In some places, notably about Dune Park, Porter 

 Coimty, the ridges are for long distances wholly destitute of vegetation. 

 Their bared surface, 50 to 100 feet in height, with the sand piled just as 

 steeply as it will lie, gleams and glistens in the sunlight and reflects the 

 summer's heat with unwonted force. Other ridges and rounded hills, especial- 

 ly those back some distance from the lake, are often covered with black oak, 

 northern scrub pine (Pinus banksiana Lamlert), stunted white pine (Pinus 

 strobus L.), and many shrubs and herbs peculiar to a soil of sand. The roots 

 o this vegetation form a network about the sand grains and prevent the 

 leveling of the dunes. In time, however, a tree is uprooted, or a forest fire 

 burns off the vegetation. The protecting network of rootlets is destroyed. 

 A bare spot results over which the winds freely play. A great storm from the 



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