behind the scenes of the Calumet Heritage Conference
A couple weeks before the conference, part of the organizing committee got together to drive the proposed bus tour route and investigate several possible stops in Indiana.  As it turned out, the actual tour was redirected to make for more pleasant walking in inclement weather and to avoid an access problem.  Nevertheless, here are a few snaps of those of us who were in on that day's exploratory mini-tour.

After assembling at Calumet College on the 4th of October, 1999, we piled into Thom Gibbons' van and headed to the Grand Calumet River Walk, which runs along the south side of the river between Hohman and Sohl Avenues in Hammond.
interpretive markerpleasant viewegretold RR bridgebridge to nowhereriver walk

Then we drove across East Chicago to Gary's Clark Road.  Between the old villages of Clarke and Pine we hopped out to stroll through the Clark & Pine Nature Preserve.
a swell swalelost in the junglesandmined dune

After driving around some more, working out what would be worthy sites to pass by and inform the public about, we checked out Whiting's Lakefront Park and scampered over the rip-rap and out onto the pier.
Chicago skylineorganizerstowards Indiana Harborthe LoopWhiting pier

We drove back to the campus along Whiting's main street, 119th, which did end up on the actual conference tour.

An alternate way to view these fourteen snaps is to click on the following links, to see a third of them at a time.  These pages will load slower but you will not have to connect to fourteen individual pages.
river walkClark-PineLakefront Park
Return to the main Calumet Heritage Conference tour page.