These sands are an end product of a long line of events. For over one million years, massive glaciers of the Pleistocene Ice Age advanced and retreated across the northern half of the North American continent, grinding and pulverizing rock, while transporting the debris in their icy travels. With the final glacial retreat some 10,000 years ago, the long process of distribution was taken over by rivers, lake currents, and wind. Sandbars created 4,000 years ago by the higher water levels of Lake Michigan's ancestor, Lake Nipissing, became vast sand beaches when water levels receded. With the sculpting of these exposed beaches by westerly winds, Lake Michigan's dunes were born.
Ancient sands continue to wash and drift into dunes along modern Lake Michigan.
And long after we are gone, the sand will still be here, or there, or somewhere, ever shifting and drifting. These sands of time have a profound effect on visitors, connecting them with the timelessness of the elements and the natural processes. Paradoxically, in spite of their antiquity, the sands collectively are an example of geology in fast forward. Dunes are never the same from one day to the next. Indeed, in a strong wind the transformation takes place before our very eyes.