Miller Beach: Where Aviation Learned to Glide

In eighteen ninety-six, an engineer named Octave Chanute and his team arrived at Miller Beach on the Indiana Dunes and began flying gliders off the sand slopes into the lake wind. Over that summer they completed hundreds of flights, systematically collecting aerodynamic data that no one had gathered before. Chanute freely shared everything he learned, and a few years later two brothers from Ohio named Wilbur and Orville Wright wrote to him for advice.

His biplane-truss glider design became the structural template for the Wright Flyer. The dunes that helped teach America to fly are now part of Indiana Dunes National Park. Marquette Park today honors that legacy.