Wolf Lake Harbor and Seaport

Jerry Banik, April 2023

Wow! A harbor and seaport in Wolf Lake?

Before any of us were born, there were plans to turn Wolf Lake into a great harbor and seaport. One plan, it was said, even “rivals the Panama Canal in importance and probably exceeds it in potential usefulness.  At no spot in America are conditions so ideal for a great national transfer port.”

How did that happen, you may ask?

Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a story that goes back some 400 years, to the early 1600s and the French explorers, when Robert de La Salle, Jacque Marquette and their men paddled along our shore in canoes.

In the 1700s, as America expanded westward, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance to legislate the settlement of what we today call the Great Lakes region.  George Washington felt it was possible and practical to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River by creating a chain of waterways from the St. Lawrence River and through the Great Lakes.

By the mid-1800s, goods of all kinds were being carried by ships and barges on the Great Lakes.  There was fierce competition among towns to make theirs the entry point from the Great Lakes into the inland waterways.  Right here in northwest Indiana, speculators, business interests and government entities promoted projects to build systems that could reach westward to the Illinois River and the Mississippi.

Wolf Lake was in just the right spot.  In the eyes of many, Wolf Lake could be made into the greatest seaport in North America.  It already was connected to Lake Michigan, although only modestly, by what was generously referred to as the Wolf River, a narrow, shallow strip of water (think, “Amaizo Channel”) which has long since been filled in at its mouth.  To the west of Wolf Lake was Lake Calumet in Illinois.  These two lakes were connected by a channel, said to have been created over many years by native American tribes pushing canoes through the marshy swamp land between the two.  It was felt that Lake Calumet could then be connected to the Des Plaines, Illinois and Mississippi Rivers with the help of a little digging and dredging.

So, in 1873, the U.S Army Corps of Engineers conducted a feasibility study of the Wolf River and Wolf Lake for consideration of building a harbor.  In 1874 they conducted another such survey, and yet another in 1879.  Nothing came of any of these.

In 1882, Capt. William Watts, “one of the oldest of the lake Captains”, collected petitions from mariners and presented them to the U.S. Congress, showing both the need and the fitness of our area for a “harbor of refuge” at Wolf Lake.  Supporters of the idea, including Indiana governor Albert Porter, pursued an ambitious plan that included dredging and widening the Grand Calumet River.  The plan was opposed by Illinois partisans who sought to build harbors at the Chicago and Calumet Rivers, and like those before it, nothing came of Captain Watts’ plan either. 

In 1891, a plan to build an inland harbor in Wolf Lake was recognized by the U.S. Congress, which appropriated $8,000 to move ahead.  But, U.S. engineer Major W.L. Marshall refused to begin the work for lack of necessary plan approvals.

By then, some dredging had already been done to re-open the Wolf River’s entrance to Lake Michigan.  That entrance already had a 600-foot pier extending into Lake Michigan, “substantially built of best quality white oak”.  It existed primarily to pump Lake Michigan water into Wolf Lake, for the benefit of the Knickerbocker and other companies on Wolf Lake and George Lake that cut, stored and sold ice to area meat packers, the railroads and to consumers.

Major Marshall was being kept busy, as seen in this 1890 map he submitted in connection with yet another survey he conducted, showing a proposed waterway that would connect Chicago to the Des Plaines and Illinois rivers.

In 1892, newspapers reported that  Chicago’s harbors were overtaxed and could not meet the demand on its facilities.  As far back as 1873, they said, U.S. government engineers reported that Wolf Lake would make a fine harbor, and,  “hundreds of prominent citizens,” including then Indiana governor Ira Chase, “have petitioned Congress to conduct a survey.” 

1893—As required by the United States River and Harbor Act, another survey (you probably saw that coming) was done by Major Marshall, but his report was not encouraging.  It said that, “Properly speaking, there is no ‘harbor’ of Wolf River now existing. No public interests can be subserved by the construction of a harbor at the outlet of Wolf Lake. Neither the Lake nor the River are navigable waters in the sense that they can be used to carry on commerce...between the States of the United States or with foreign countries.”  He did add, though, that “A harbor at this point can be readily constructed,” and conceded that, “such a construction would materially improve the value of undeveloped lands in this vicinity and thus indirectly benefit the public.”  

1895—Harbor boosters had not given up.  Local businessmen and politicians again approached Congress, this time for an appropriation of $800,000 for improvements, but the matter was never taken up or approved by Congress. 

1896—Hammond City Engineer W.F. Bridge drew up plans showing a canal through Wolf Lake, George Lake and the Grand Calumet River.  Hammond was to build the canal, and Congress was to fund building the harbor.  Just as the others before it, that plan went nowhere.

In 1897, the State of Indiana Department of Geology and Natural Resources published an in-depth report on the many advantages that Wolf Lake had over Illinois for building a harbor and seaport.  Among the advantages were:

• “Five square miles, three to fourteen feet deep.”

• “Surrounded and touched by ten great trunk lines of railway and by five railroad belt lines that cross and connect with them in Chicago.”

• “Two pipe lines carrying crude oil from the fields of eastern Indiana and Ohio to the largest oil refinery in the world in Whiting.”

• “Two natural gas pipelines from the natural gas fields of Indiana pass close to the proposed harbor.”

• “The Illinois rivers are filling up with sewage and sediment at a rate of eight to twelve inches a year.  Wolf Lake has not filled one foot since Columbus discovered America,” and,

• “Illinois’ bridge and tunnel impediments add 25 percent to freight costs versus Wolf Lake.”

The report also touted the ability of ships to enter the harbor from the north, whereas Chicago’s options were entered from the east.  Lake Michigan’s killer storms, the report said, come from the North, and, in 1894, “23 vessels were wrecked in one storm on the shores of Lake Michigan, near Wolf Lake...unable to make the harbors at Chicago and Calumet.  If there had been a harbor at Wolf Lake, such as is now proposed, it is believed that all of these ships could have entered in safety.”

Fast forward to 1917.  There is still no Wolf Lake seaport or harbor.  In an address to businessmen in Indianapolis, a Chicago architect who had “drawn plans for skyscrapers, government buildings and great hotels” expressed the only reason he knew of to prevent the creation of a great metropolis, the world’s center of industry and the first city of Indiana:  “The damned short-sightedness of the Calumet region.”  Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago, he said, needed to amalgamate without further delay to get the harbor built.

Apparently, few in his audience agreed.

Now it’s 1919.  There is still no harbor or seaport in Wolf Lake.  Seaport fever has spread to South Bend, though, a city much farther from Lake Michigan, but with access by way of some fifty miles of the Saint Joseph River, through Michigan

It, too, was never built.

In 1920, the Great War in Europe was over, the roaring twenties were starting to roar, and aspirations for Wolf Lake Harbor again sprung to life.  This time, for sure!

From the Lake County Times, Dec. 8, 1920:   “Illiana, the world’s greatest port, may be placed at the door of Chicago...The plan provides for the taking over of Wolf Lake for an inner and an outer harbor, the building of more than thirty-seven miles of dockage,” to be administered by a joint, Indiana/Illinois commission.

Major Henry W. Lee, who had urged the project for years, announced that drawings of the plan had been approved by the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors in Washington.  The outer harbor would be protected by a three and a half mile breakwater in Lake Michigan, and on the shoreline would be fourteen slips with docks, served by railroad facilities.  The inner harbor in Wolf Lake would have ten slips with railroad docks, and winter berths for hundreds of boats.  Entrance would be made through the Wolf River, over which bridges would be built. 

Newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, now said the plan for Illiana Harbor in Wolf Lake was finally more than just a dream.  Partially in Robertsdale and partially in Chicago, the harbor in Wolf Lake would “establish the world’s greatest port facilities to take care of the vast warehousing and transfer operations which will be required where so many agencies of transportation meet.”  All commerce between the eastern seaboard and points west and northwest was to pass through here, where it could be diverted between rail and water as needed.

The Jones and Laughlin Company got on board, acquiring 300 acres of land near the intersection of Sheffield and Calumet Avenues and south to 143rd Street, to build an extensive railroad switching operation to service the harbor in Wolf Lake. Highlighted in this detail from a 1925 map is the area where Jones and Laughlin planned to build. Coincidentally, although the railyard was never built, it marked the end of the once popular Kindel’s Grove resort there.

In 1923, though, the Indiana/Illinois partnership broke down when the joint commission reported that the Illiana Harbor project would cost too much, and recommended that plans starting at the mouth of the Chicago River should take precedence.  The Illiana Harbor project, the Commission said, might be revisited, but only after the so-called Lakes-to-Gulf-Waterway project could be completed and the Saint Lawrence Waterway project was further developed.  Stated another way, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”  It also announced that the City of Chicago would soon start work on a seaport of its own in Lake Calumet.  They did, and today it’s known as the Illinois National Port District. 

In response, engineer Major Henry Lee vowed to continue the last real fight for the seaport, along with Hammond’s mayor Daniel Brown and Whiting’s mayor Walter Schrage, but all three went to their graves without that dream ever being realized.

So, just for fun, the next time you drive down Calumet Avenue, cast your eyes westward across Wolf Lake and imagine how it might have looked.