During the twentieth century, many people worked hard to save the dunes from development for industrial and port uses. This was not easy. The land along that area of Lake Michigan is extremely valuable. Some of the land provides important lake ports. Industries and Indiana's natural gas company also operate along the lake.

FAITH LAPIDUS: In the early nineteen fifties, some companies were removing five tons of sand each day from the dunes. Scientists of the Indiana Geological Survey investigated the sand supply in nineteen fifty-two. They said that the dunes would be gone in fifty to one hundred years if companies continued to remove sand at that rate. The wind and waves of Lake Michigan created the dunes over thousands of years. Yet people could destroy the dunes in a lifetime.

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STEVE EMBER: The federal government established the National Park Service in nineteen sixteen. A Chicago businessman named Stephen Mather was its first director. Mr. Mather created many national parks. He wanted the Indiana dunes to be a national park, too. However, the United States had entered World War One in nineteen seventeen. Congress was not thinking about creating parks. It was thinking about soldiers and military supplies.

Public support for a protected dunes park continued to grow, however. In nineteen twenty-three, Indiana passed a bill providing tax money to buy property along the lake from its private owners. In nineteen twenty-six, the Indiana Dunes State Park opened. It contained more than eight hundred hectares of land.