Michigan City
"Lake Michigan doesn't care that it's not an ocean — from Washington Park's beach, it argues the point convincingly."
A lakefront town squeezed between steel country and sand dunes, where a century-old lighthouse guards a beach that could pass for the Atlantic if the water weren't fresh. Lia and I came for one night and ended up wading into Lake Michigan at sunset, unwilling to leave before the sky finished its show.
We drove into Michigan City not expecting much beyond a place to sleep between Chicago and Indiana Dunes, and left having to revise that opinion entirely. The town sits where an industrial past — coal-fired power plants and a shuttered state prison are both visible from the water — meets a genuinely beautiful stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline, and it wears that contrast without much self-consciousness. Washington Park Beach curves out toward a breakwater lighthouse that’s been guiding ships since 1858, and by early evening the whole beach turns the kind of gold that makes you forget you’re standing next to a power plant.
Washington Park and the lighthouse
The Old Michigan City Lighthouse, decommissioned but immaculately kept, now houses a small maritime museum stacked with lifesaving gear and shipwreck stories from the lake’s more violent decades. We climbed the breakwater at dusk, wind kicking hard off the water, watching freighters slide along the horizon toward Chicago. Lia grew up sailing the Mediterranean and kept insisting the lake smelled like a real sea; I couldn’t argue with her once the waves picked up and started breaking white against the rocks.
Uptown Arts District
Inland from the beach, Franklin Street’s Uptown Arts District has been quietly filling old storefronts with galleries, a restored 1920s movie palace, and a couple of unpretentious diners that still run breakfast specials on chalkboards. We caught a small jazz trio playing free in a converted warehouse space and ended the night at a bar pouring beer from a brewery two blocks away, the kind of low-key scene that doesn’t advertise itself outside the county.
Getting There
Michigan City is about an hour east of Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD), the most convenient major hub, via I-90 and I-94. South Bend International Airport (SBN) is closer, roughly forty minutes southeast, with fewer flight options. A car is the easiest way in, though the South Shore Line commuter train also connects Michigan City directly to downtown Chicago if you’d rather skip the drive.
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