The Calumet Region Historical Guide
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I TEDS! DETROIT H ^- ^Z^fir~ 5-,^. f I S R A I! HICAGO ' 1 < .' CALUMET DISTRICT .... The Red Man came and saw and pitched his tent amid Nature's dunelands. Ah! who shall write the epic story of the heretofore unwritten drama that was there unfolded . the fierce hatreds, and strug- gles fraught with tragedy; the sublime pas- sions of love, the long periods of peace, where in his native poetic eloquence, he conversed with earth and sky, dreaming great dreams, looking up at the brilliant stars, his classic bronze features fanned by the soft-scented breath of the Indian summer? . The buzz of machines, the whirl of wheels, and the rush . of steam everywhere fill the air The Red Man of the Calumet has vanished engulfed and forgotten in the march of civilization. Father John Baptiste deVille THE CALUMET REGION HISTORICAL GUIDE Containing the early history of the region as well as the contemporary scene within the cities of Gary, Hammond, East Chicago Indiana and (including Harbor) , Whiting Compiled by the WORKERS OF THE WRITERS' PROGRAM OF THE WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION in the State of Indiana Sponsored by THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF GARY and THE GARY COMMERCIAL CLUB and CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CARMAN PRINTING CO. 1939 Copyright, 1939 By the Board of Education of Gary, Indiana FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY JOHN M. CARMODY, ADMINISTRATOR WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION F. C. HARRINGTON, COMMISSIONER FLORENCE KERR, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER JOHN K. JENNINGS, ADMINISTRATOR FOR INDIANA GORDON F. BRIGGS, SUPERVISOR OF INDIANA WRITERS' PROJECT Printed in the United States of America To the governor of Indiana, M. Clifford Townsend, during whose incumbency the State of Indiana celebrated with its sister states the sesquicentennial of the organization of the Northwest Territory and Lake County, Indiana celebrated its centennial. PREFACE This Guide is one of a series of guidebooks to states, cities, and metropolitan areas compiled by the Writers' Program, Work Projects Administration. A special unit of field workers and editors under the supervision of the editorial staff of the State office of the Indiana Writers' Project, for more than a year has been collecting, writing, and editing the material contained herein. Headquarters for the work has been the Gary Commercial Club and Chamber of Commerce, Gary, Indiana. Fringing the southern tip of Lake Michigan in northwest Indiana is an arc of land about 16 miles long, and at most, ten miles wide. Within this arc is a grouping of four industrial cities: Gary, Hammond, East Chicago (including Indiana Harbor), and Whiting. The area, through local usage, is known as the Calumet Region. The term Calumet Region, as used in the title of this book, has been arbitrarily circumscribed to mean these four cities and their immediate environs. The term is not susceptible of precise definition. Popular usages vary in their geographical delimitation of the region. Thus there are some who hold it to embrace all the territory lying contiguous to the southerly shore of Lake Michigan from St. Joseph, on the eastern coast, to Waukegan, on the western, as far south as the basin of the Kankakee River. Others restrict it to the Lake Michigan litterol from South Chicago (included) to and embracing Michigan City, with a southerly extension to the Little Calumet River. For the purpose of this guidebook it has been thought advisable to fix the western limit as the Illinois-Indiana State boundary, co-terminous with the western boundary of Hammond, and the eastern as the easterly line of the Indiana Dunes State Park. The southern line of the region has been set as the southernmost point in the city of Gary, about ten miles from the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Numerous towns, hamlets, and points of interest are treated as environs. Because of its industrial and commercial eminence and the resultant wholly industrial cities, the Calumet Region dramatically illustrates the industrial age the twentieth century. This a region, within few miles of the eastern city limits of Chicago, lay the dormant during nineteenth century waiting for electricity and the machine age to give it life. IX This volume is unusual among the Writers' Program series for two reasons: First, because the book is a guide to a region that is wholly new and wholly industrial, and second, because it is a guide to four indus- trial cities, Gary, Hammond, East Chicago and Whiting, an unusual metropolitan area. How can a region as young as the Calumet Industrial Region be said to have a history? How can an industrial area have any interest for the layman? These two questions were met on every hand by the editors. However, they were heartened by those contemporary annalists who main- tain that the true history of the twentieth century is the story of indus- trialism, and by those historiographers who say that, although the vital events of a city or a region have been hurried forward from stage to stage, the record of them is history. To those who heretofore have found no romance in the whirring of wheels, the spinning of cylinders, the raising and lowering of giant cranes; to those who have found no beauty in spraying fountains of molten steel or in the red glow in the sky from a Bessemer furnace, a new apprecia- also that tion will be given, it is hoped, through this book. It is hoped to the stranger will be revealed the treasures and resources of the area, a and that, through this volume, the citizens of this area will be given new pride of possession. The editors are indebted to many individuals and organizations for assistance. Acknowledgement is made to the Gary Public Library and to the Gary Commercial Club and Chamber of Commerce for generously providing offices for the work. For wholehearted assistance in research, acknowledgments are extended to the Hammond, Whiting, East Chicago, Gary, and the Chicago Newberry libraries. For supplying information, giving criticism, suggestions, and reading manuscripts, thanks are extended to John B. Peterson, Crown Point; A. Murray Turner, Miss Myrtle Maye Huehn, and Dr. Hedwig Kuhn, Hammond; Lawrence Becker, Indiana Harbor; Hurley Lee Ragon, Lowell; Harry L. Warriner, Alfred Jones, Frank Gavit, Captain H. S. Norton, Ray Thomas, Frank Sheehan, and Miss Elizabeth Ames, Gary; and to Mr. John T. Frederick, Regional Director of the Writers' Program, Chicago. For maps in this volume we are indebted to the cartographic department of the Illinois Writers' Project. For the articles on the history of the Work-Study-Play System, the Judiciary, Military Activities and the Dune Country in the Calumet Region, the editors are greatly indebted to Mrs. James A. Pat- terson and James A. Patterson, both of Gary; Foster Bruce of Crown Point and Mrs. Frank J. Sheehan of Gary, and A. B. Dickson and of the Virginia Moe of Gary respectively. The moral support Chambers of Commerce in Gary, Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago, together with their other invaluable assistance, also is acknowledged. At all times helpful were the various county and city departments and for this the editors are deeply grateful. For making possible the publication of this volume, the project is genuinely indebted to H. B. Snyder, editor of the Gary Post-Tribune. To our sponsors, the Gary Commercial Club and Chamber of Commerce and the Gary Board of Education; and to all those institutions and to all individuals who, in advance, reserved copies of the Calumet Region His- torical Guide., we are grateful. To the Calumet Guide, all workers on the local project have con- tributed, according to their capabilities; field workers have collected data in the field; research workers have delved into library shelves; typists have typed and retyped; special writers, loaned to the staff, have sub- mitted essays; and the small editorial staff in the Calumet Guide office has struggled to keep up with incoming copy. While the work, from the beginning, has been under the personal supervision of Naomi Harris Phillips, the volume is truly a product of co-operative effort. GORDON F. BRIGGS, Supervisor, Indiana Writers' Project. XI CONTENTS PAGE Preface IX THE REGION Calendar of Events 1 Character and Setting _ 3 Early Cartography 6 Red Man of the Calumet - 10 Under Three Flags 1_ 15 The First Citizen ^_ , 25 1776-1917 29 The Religious History of the Calumet Region 34 The Judiciary of Lake County 38 The Fine Arts 46 The Negro in the Calumet Region 51 Labor 56 Transportation _. 67 Industrial Tour I ...... 8 1 Industrial Tour II ...... 9 1 Industrial Tour HI - . 97 Industrial Points of Interest 104 Environs of the Calumet District I 116 Environs of the Calumet District II 123 The Dune Country I : 129 The Dune Country II ...... ..133 Points of Interest, Indiana Dunes ..136 Wild Flowers in \hc Dune Country ..142 GARY General Information 147 Chronology ....148 In Retrospect _ 1 49 Steel Engraving 163 Utilities 172 Work-Study-Play System 178 Points of Interest I 183 Points of Interest II .....186 Points of Interest III ..192 HAMMOND General Information , 1 99 Chronology 200 Lithograph , _201 Points of Interest , 209 EAST CHICAGO General Information ., 213 Chronology 214 Industrial Mural ... 215 Points of Interest 223 WHITING General Information ...- 227 Chronology .... _. _ 227 Done in Oil .. .228 Points of Interest 235 Bibliography _ _ _ 255 xn ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Lake Michigan : 1 Embryonic Dunes 1 The Wild Beauty of the Dunes ..... 16 The Marriage Tree, Bailly Homestead : 17 Chapel, Bailly Homestead 17 "Steel Harbor" 64 White Hot Steel Ingot Being Rolled Into Blocks in Inland Steel Co. 65 "Tiny Men Move Busily Among the Monsters," Gary Steel Mills . 80 Inland Steel Co. on "Made Land" over Lake Michigan 80 White Hot Slabs Being Conveyed Through the Inland Steel Plant 97 Cutting Steel Rails Gary Steel Mills 97 Steel, Dripping like Flame-colored Syrup Gary Steel Mills .