page_title: Miller Beach
section_title: Natural environment
hierarchical_section_title: Miller Beach / Natural environment
caption_attribution_description: English: View east toward Lake Street from the Miller Woods area of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, looking across the Miller Lagoon in Miller Beach, a neighborhood of Gary, Indiana.
context_page_description: Miller Beach is a neighborhood of Gary, Indiana on the southernmost shore of Lake Michigan. First settled in 1851, Miller Beach was originally an independent town. However, the "Town of Miller" was eventually annexed by the then flourishing city of Gary in 1918. Located in the northeastern corner of Lake County, Indiana, the former town is now known as "The Miller Beach Community." Miller Beach borders Lake Michigan to the north, Porter County to the east, and is largely surrounded by protected lands, including Indiana Dunes National Park. Miller Beach is also the closest beach/resort community to Chicago, and has been a popular vacation spot since the early 20th century. As of the 2000 US census, it had a population of 9,900.
  Home to some of the world's most threatened ecosystems, Miller Beach contains a high proportion of legally protected land. Miller encompasses the westernmost part of Indiana Dunes National Park, which is part of the United States National Park system, and includes both the Miller Woods and Long Lake areas. Indiana Dunes' West Beach area lies immediately to the east of Miller Beach. The entire shoreline of Miller is public beachfront.
context_section_description: The natural landscape of Miller Beach includes "some of the most pristine habitats that remain in Northwest Indiana". The freshwater panne habitat, found at Miller Woods and West Beach, is considered globally imperiled by the Nature Conservancy.  The dune and swale complex is unique to the southern Great Lakes, with only a few isolated pockets remaining.    Sand oak savanna, of which Miller Woods provides "one of the finest in the Chicago region", is both globally and state imperiled.
  This varied landscape of dunes and wetlands is the legacy of fluctuations in Lake Michigan and the Grand Calumet River since the last Ice Age.  The Wisconsinan glaciation ended in the Miller Beach area around 18,000 years ago, forming Glacial Lake Chicago as the glaciers melted.  Some boreal species remained in hospitable habitats after the climate had warmed, while more heat-tolerant species such as the six-lined racerunner and prickly pear cactus moved in during the Holocene climatic optimum to inhabit the mesic uplands.
  After the glaciers retreated, factors including isostatic rebound of the earth's crust led to a series of different lake levels, each of which left a mark on the landscape.  During the Algonquin stage, the dune-and-swale ridges of the Tolleston Beach were formed across much of the Calumet Region, including the southern part of Miller Beach. The later and lower Nipissing stage created the high dunes that mark the northern, lakeward part of Miller Beach. Around 2600 BP, the Grand Calumet River formed; prior to the 19th century, it emptied into Lake Michigan at Marquette Park in Miller Beach, where the Grand Calumet Lagoons are today.  The direction of the Grand Calumet was changed in 1862.  Because the river is nearly flat, however, the direction of flow through the lagoons sometimes reverses after heavy rains.
caption: The middle of the three Grand Calumet Lagoons in Miller Beach. The lagoons mark the former mouth and modern-day headwaters of the Grand Calumet River.[74]
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