Access to West Beach - Indiana Dunes National Park — Attraction in Portage

This is a really unique National Park and historic site. It really should be a National Historical Park or National Lakeshore like similar locations are in Michigan (Sleeping Bear Dunes for example). The National Park Service does amazing work preserving our historic and natural resources and it’s run by smart people who really work hard and do a lot with a small budget relatively speaking. (The Department of Defense does an amazing job at preservation as well and they follow Department of the Interior standards too a tee - I love the Department of Defense.) Anyway, making this area a full national park was a bit premature and political - it was pushed through legislation because Indiana is lacking in NPS designations and there is still a lot to be done to bring it up to the same level as other smaller scale national parks. But the fact that this site has an urban-rural fringe setting and is so well preserved as a recreation space and easily accessible to many people who cannot travel to the large national parks out west is refreshing. My family spent two days exploring the park in July - one afternoon for swimming at a lifeguard beach with a nice bathhouse and then a morning and early afternoon exploring the houses and farms included in the park - was a really enjoyable experience. We look forward to coming back for a visit (we stayed at a nearby hotel as part of our drive home from Ohio road trip to see family). Sorry for my little essay above - just thoughts on this new national park. This is what makes America great - our...

Perfect place to hike in the dunes, or wade in the shallows with limited accessibility ramps

Disappointing to enter a National park with the location they choose ,I have been going to the Indiana Dunes for years and have enjoyed it. I have never been to this location, and I was expecting that when they announced it to be a national park they will have choosen a better ,suited location to welcome national and international visitors. I was excited to drive my sister visiting for the 1st in the USA to see the sunset after driving from Michigan,she visited 3 National parks in California and in Arizona prior to going to see me. She was very disappointed ,she laughted and said "this is a national park?", the views were bad from this beach ( views of the industries close by), a lot of trash from beach goers, rowdy young kids hanging around obviously to drink towards the night since the guard house is closed already for the day, the beach house leading to the beach was a joke, signs were not clear .The only bonus was during Sunset we went to the trail with a...