Where's Indiana's Chicago?

Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio's major cities are all adjacent to a Great Lake, so why not Indiana?

Shouldn’t Indiana have one of these on its Lake Michigan shoreline? Photo by Pedro Lastra on Unsplash

Next week I have a whole video coming out about the U.S. state of Indiana! It’s been a really fun place to explore because, in my head anyways, it’s one of those states that I often forget about. I know it exists, of course, but because of its surrounding states it’s often easy to overlook. So I dug deep into Indiana and how it came to be, well, Indiana.

Anyway, one of the aspects about the state that really interested me was the fact that Indiana doesn’t have a major city along its Lake Michigan shoreline. Indianapolis, Indiana’s largest city, in located in the center of the state. South Bend is close-ish, but still pretty far away from the lake, and Forth Wayne is in the northeast near Ohio. Along Indiana’s shoreline is a smattering of smaller and older industrial cities that are basically just part of the Chicago metropolitan area today and a quaint little city called Michigan City. I actually don’t know if it is in fact “quaint” but Google Maps has just the quaintest photo so I’m running with that adjective.

So what’s going on here? Did Indiana totally whiff on an opportunity to carve out a major metropolitan area for itself, or was there a specific reason for this?

Despite a 45-mile-long shoreline along Lake Michigan, Indiana never developed a major urban center there like Illinois did with Chicago, Wisconsin with Milwaukee, Michigan with Detroit, or Ohio with Cleveland. And while, yes, East Chicago and Gary are both along the shore and both firmly located within Indiana, neither rose to the same level of prominence. And this likely comes down to two key reasons: the physical geography of the area and the pathway of settlers into Indiana.

Indiana’s Lake Michigan topography isn’t great

As it turns out, much of Indiana's Lake Michigan shore is simply less hospitable to development than any of the other four states shorelines. And due to its relatively small area, again only 45 miles in length, this means that there wasn’t a great spot to place a large port city. The Indiana Dunes, now a national park, are an ecologically significant but developmentally limiting feature of the landscape. Comparing Indiana’s shoreline to Illinois’, despite the closeness, you can start to see why Chicago was developed there and not in Indiana. Quite simply, it was flatter and easier to develop on. Not that Indiana’s northwest corner has huge mountains, but it was certain;y more enticing that digging out dunes.

But also and crucially, Chicago has a major river. And not just any river, but a river that they were eventually able to connect to the mighty Mississippi River via the Illinois and Michigan Canal. This meant that, in a bizarre turn of fortune, Chicago became a middle point between the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean. This created an incredible passage where goods could be made in Chicago and then shipped by boat in either direction. This isn’t as big of a deal today, but in the mid to late 1800s? It was huge!

Indiana’s settlers largely came from the south

Another key reason for this is the relatively late settlement of northwestern Indiana. Much of Indiana's early population growth occurred in the southern and central parts of the state, where settlers arrived from Kentucky and Ohio following more established migration routes. By the time northwest Indiana became more accessible, Chicago had already begun to emerge as a major urban hub which limited the appeal of building a competing port city along Indiana’s shoreline. And without a major river, there was likely no way that another major port city even could compete with Chicago. But at this time that Indiana could have established a major population center along the Lake Michigan coast even without the lure of a burgeoning port to lure in business.

You see, in the early 1800s Indiana was planning to develop a new capital. Prior to this, Indiana’s capital had bounced around a bit. First located at Vincennes in the far southwest part of the state along the Wabash River, and then moved to Corydon in 1813 in the far south along the Ohio River. These capital placements were due, in part, because northern Indiana simply wasn’t being settled yet because the lands were still firmly in control of the indigenous peoples. But as the federal government seized land from the Native American tribes, it would begin the process of opening up areas for settlement and Indiana’s population shifted northward. This got people thinking about whether Corydon, in the far south, was the best place for a state capital. And so… Indiana would create Indianapolis.

Indianapolis, Indiana’s largest city today, was a purposefully built, planned city that was placed as close as possible to the center of the state. This was probably Indiana’s last chance to get a major city on its Lake Michigan shoreline, but, in trying to be as accessible as possible, the state wanted its new found capital to be located where people could actually access it.

And so, there you have it! Indiana today is one of only two states without at least a somewhat major city along its Great Lakes shoreline. The other, of course, being Minnesota. But Minnesota’s shoreline is well north and geographically very distant in a way that Indiana’s is not. Pennsylvania, you could argue, also doesn’t have a “major” city, but it does have Erie, Pennsylvania which is home to about 270,000 people in its metropolitan area, so it’s something!