page_title: Miller Beach
section_title: Part of Gary
hierarchical_section_title: Miller Beach / History / Part of Gary
caption_attribution_description: English: Carter G. Woodson Branch of the Gary Public Library, constructed 1991, in the Miller Beach 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: After its annexation, the community continued to grow. So did its tourist industry: Drusilla Carr, proprietress of Carr's Beach (now Lake Street Beach), collected rent on more than a hundred beach cottages.  With attractions including a shooting gallery, bath house, miniature railroad and "night spots", Carr's Beach was Gary's most popular summer destination in the late 1920s.  With the construction and expansion of Marquette Park in the 1930s, and an influx of affluent residents from other parts of Gary in the late 1940s, the neighborhood became increasingly a resort community.  It also became a segregated white community, with African-Americans banned from the beaches, and also from the neighborhood except for day workers.
  In 1967, Richard Hatcher was elected mayor of Gary, becoming the first African-American mayor of any major US city.  The voting in his election was almost entirely along racial lines, with white Democrats voting en masse for the Republican candidate in the general election.  A key exception to this was in Miller Beach, where Hatcher obtained decisive support from a group of primarily Jewish Millerites who had opposed the Wallace presidential campaign in 1968  and had subsequently supported Hatcher in his bid for the Gary Common Council.
  Fearing that the white flight occurring elsewhere in Gary would be replicated in Miller Beach, local residents formed the Miller Citizens Corporation (MCC) in 1971.  Unlike similar groups elsewhere in the city, the goal of the MCC was not to prevent integration, but to slow the process so that events did not spiral out of control.  The MCC worked to stem flight from the community with techniques including positive publicity about Miller's advantages, and banning "For Sale" signs. As part of this effort, the organization also took on environmental issues, including banning sand mining in residential areas.
  The National Lakeshore was founded in 1966 through the efforts of Senator Paul Douglas, ending a struggle that had begun in the 1890s.  The Lakeshore's initial boundaries, however, did not include the Miller Woods and Long Lake areas in Miller Beach.  After the death of Senator Douglas in 1976, a Lakeshore expansion bill gained bipartisan support in Congress, as a memorial to him.  With the bill's passage, the Lakeshore was expanded by 4,300 acres, including Miller Woods and Long Lake.
  In 2002, faced with plummeting property tax revenue due to a state-imposed change in assessments of industrial property, the city of Gary nearly doubled tax rates, leading to widespread outcry.  Together with other organizations around the state, the Miller Citizens Corporation lobbied successive state governments to impose tax caps.  The tax caps became law in 2008, and became part of the state constitution in 2010.
caption: The Woodson branch of the Gary Public Library, in downtown Miller Beach.  The branch dates to 1913, although the current building was constructed in 1991.[46]
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