If you have followed my posts over the last couple of years you have probably noticed that I am spending a lot of time in the Great Marsh part of the Indiana Dunes park. In addition to the fact that it is a wetland and has a lot of biodiversity, I have also become interested by the restoration work going on there. Depending on where in the park you go, you can experience areas of the Great Marsh which have been undergoing restoration for over a decade, and parts which have not yet seen much work. The story of the early commercial development of the area, and the subsequent efforts of the park to acquire the land and restore it to its natural state is fascinating to me.
I have been doing an increasing amount of research into the areas history. Recently a friend pointed me to two resources which are turning out to be incredibly useful.
One of the resources is a USGS site where you can find topographical maps of the country going back to at least the early 1900s. Using them you can trace the changes to the landscape in the Great Marsh over most of its relevant history. Relevant to me at least. I provide the link below.
The other resource is for aerial photographs of the area going back to the 1930s. While the topo maps are free, you do have to pay for high resolution scans of the aerial photos.
https://legacy.igws.indiana.edu/IHAPI
I have been happily combing through these two archives and finding topo’s and aerial photos of the entire Indiana Dunes park. With a little bit of work you can crop and resize them so that they overlay one another perfectly, throw in the current satellite imagery from Google Maps and you have a real treasure trove of information.
Expect to see plenty of posts coming soon making use of these resources.