Cowles Bog: Where Ecology Was Born as a Science

This four-thousand-year-old wetland inside Indiana Dunes National Park carries the name of a University of Chicago botanist who changed how scientists understand living systems. Henry Chandler Cowles came here in the eighteen nineties as a graduate student and finished his doctoral thesis in eighteen ninety-eight: a study of how plants colonize bare sand and transform it, step by step, into forest. That process, which he called ecological succession, became one of the foundational concepts in modern ecology.

Cowles brought international scientists here for field excursions. His students spread the ideas through universities across the country. The bog was designated a National Natural Landmark in nineteen sixty-five.

The dunes around it are still doing what Cowles described: moving, building, and changing the species that live on them. The science started here.