Beverly Shores

Beverly Shores began in May of nineteen twenty-seven when Chicago developer Frederick Bartlett purchased about thirty-six hundred acres of Lake Michigan dune land and set about building a resort community forty miles from the city. Bartlett graded roads through and over the dunes and sold lots in a Mediterranean Revival style he imported from Florida. His son Robert added the enduring publicity stunt: when the nineteen thirty-three Chicago World's Fair closed, Robert Bartlett bought several of its model homes, barged them across Lake Michigan, and installed them permanently along the lakeshore.

Those houses, including the glass-and-steel House of Tomorrow, still stand today. The town incorporated in nineteen forty-seven. Then in nineteen sixty-six, Congress created the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, and two-thirds of Beverly Shores' land became part of the park.

The town now has fewer than six hundred residents, surrounded on nearly every side by protected dunes, and it was designated an International Dark Sky Community in twenty fourteen for its exceptionally clear night skies.