Line in the Sand

ONE EVENING in 1949, Dorothy Buell and her husband were on their way to dinner in Gary when she saw a poster in a hotel lobby announcing a meeting of the Indiana Dunes Preservation Council. She decided to attend. It was a choice, made in an instant, that would change Indiana’s history and one day lead to permanent protection of the state’s most endangered natural wonder.

Buell, an English teacher from Ogden Dunes, left the meeting that night inspired. Development and industrialization, she learned, were already destroying her beloved dunes. Soon, there wouldn’t be much of them left. Having discovered the fight that would define the rest of her life, she founded the Save the Dunes Council, a grassroots organization made up only of women at the time. Buell and other activists launched a national petition drive to support creation of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, gaining 500,000 signatures.

Unfortunately for the budding environmentalists, they faced opposition from Indiana’s top political and business leaders. For thousands of years, sand dunes, formed by waves and wind coming off Lake Michigan, towered all along the southern shoreline. By the middle of the 20th century, many of those