Lake County: Aquatorium

Wed, Jun 8, 2011

While in Porter County, we made a very brief visit to Lake County on the afternoon of June 4th, 2011.  Keep in mind this is the home of Gary, Indiana - murder capital of the world - and we didn’t know where to go and where not to go.

We hopped up to Marquette Park, a small but charming park by the lake that is home to the Aquatorium.

A National Historic Landmark, the Gary Aquatorium was rescued from demolition by the Chanute Aquatorium Society in 1991. The building honors Octave Chanute, the grandfather of flight, and the Tuskegee Airmen, the pioneers who spearheaded the integration of the armed forces.

According to John Drury who wrote the book ‘This is Lake County, Indiana’, “when Hammond, East Chicago and Whiting were in their infancy as industrial cities, what is now Gary, largest of all the Calumet Region cities, was but a deserted wasteland of sand hills, marshes and prairies traversed by the Grand Calumet and Little Calumet rivers.  In fact, it was so isolated that Octave Chanute, sometimes called the Father of American Aviation, selected it as the site of his pioneering glider experiments during the middle 1890’s.  It was among the sand dunes (now leveled) of north Lake County that Chanute conducted his successful glider flights and made possible a type of airplane the Wright brothers later equipped with a propeller and motor.  A huge bolder in Marquette Park, in northeast Gary, marks the approximate site of [Chanute’s experiments][3].”

The requisite photos:

Because Issac was asleep at the time, we didn’t spend a lot of time here, but instead headed back to the hotel, and then back to Laporte County.