Washington Park Beach

Washington Park was first laid out in 1891, but the park people love today was largely built in the 1930s. Federal relief crews from the Civil Works Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and the Works Progress Administration reshaped the shifting dunes into a designed landscape, laying stone stairways and retaining walls, planting the slopes, and raising buildings that still stand. It was a jobs program, but the workers left behind real craft, and the park earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

The result is a park with bones. Instead of a flat lot dropped beside the water, you get a rolling dune landscape stitched together with stonework, shaded groves climbing the hills, and grand old structures that give the place the feel of a 1930s resort. It is one of the most complete surviving examples of that era of public park building on the Indiana lakeshore.

The park's landmark is its observation tower, dedicated in 1937 atop one of the tallest dunes, rising nearly two hundred feet above Lake Michigan. It is an unusual four-story Art Deco structure built on a steel railroad-tower frame donated by the South Shore railroad, then faced in stone and topped with an ornament said to be a pressure chamber from the city's very first fire engine. Climb it on a clear day and the reward is a full sweep of the beach, the harbor, the dunes, and the lake running out to Chicago.

At the tower's foot sits the Washington Park Zoo, which has occupied its patch of dune since 1928 and grew, oddly enough, out of cast-off and injured animals the fire department once looked after. It is believed to be the only zoo in Indiana designed and landscaped entirely by the WPA and its predecessor agencies, so the enclosures and paths share the same handsome 1930s stonework as the rest of the park. It is small and old-fashioned in the best way, an easy add-on to a beach day with kids.

Where Trail Creek empties into the lake at the park's edge, two lighthouses tell Michigan City's maritime story. The older one, built in 1858, is the oldest surviving lighthouse in Indiana and now houses the Old Lighthouse Museum, run by the local historical society. It stopped guiding ships in 1904, when a new light took over at the end of the pier.

That newer beacon, the East Pierhead Lighthouse with its distinctive white tower and red roof, is the only operating lighthouse in the state, and it is the image most people picture when they think of Michigan City. A long pier reaches out to it from shore, and the walk to the end is the classic thing to do here: water on both sides, gulls overhead, the beach and dunes at your back and the open lake ahead. Take it gently on a windy day, when spray can wash the concrete.

Washington Park sits at the north end of Michigan City, an easy drive off the interstate in the far northwest corner of Indiana, roughly an hour from both Chicago and South Bend. Summer beach parking is paid and the lot fills on hot weekends, so the reliable move is an early arrival. Lifeguards work the swimming beach in season, and because Lake Michigan can throw up real surf and rip currents, the posted flags are worth respecting.

Give yourself a full outing: spread out on the wide sand, walk the pier to the red-roofed lighthouse, climb the tower for the view, and let the kids loose in the little zoo. Between the dunes, the 1930s stonework, and the maritime history, it is a beach day with layers, the sort of proper old lakefront park that feels like it has always been part of summer here.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.