Munster, Indiana

Munster, Indiana is the kind of town the Chicago region produced by the dozens in the early twentieth century. Dutch and German farmers settled this Lake County prairie starting in the eighteen fifties, growing crops and producing dairy for Chicago markets about thirty miles to the northwest. The town incorporated in nineteen oh seven.

It takes its name from Jacob Munster, a Dutch storekeeper whose general store housed the local post office. For decades it remained a quiet farming community. Then the postwar highway boom arrived.

With direct access to the Chicago metro and Indiana's lower taxes, Munster grew rapidly through the nineteen fifties and sixties into a bedroom suburb of more than twenty thousand people. Today it is home to Centennial Park and the Community Foundation of Northwest Indiana.