At the heart of the struggle to save the uniquely beautiful Indiana sand dunes, Westchester Township lies on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, 50 miles southeast of Chicago. It extends from the Indiana Dunes that line the shore and continues south, to the rolling hills of the Valparaiso Moraine. The township is home to four incorporated towns, the Burns Harbor Plant of Bethlehem
Steel, and two large expanses of public land—the Indiana
Dunes National Lakeshore and the Indiana Dunes State Park.
Westchester Township tells the story of the people who settled the township and those who contributed to its growth and transformation into a vigorous and diverse community.
The photographs date from the early 1850s through the early
1960s, focusing primarily on the period from the 1880s to the 1940s. The majority of the images were drawn from the files of the Chesterton Tribune, which has served Westchester
Township and the surrounding area since 1884. Additional pictures were kindly loaned by a variety of local citizens and institutions.