New Chicago: Steel Workers' Summer Town

New Chicago was platted in eighteen ninety-three in Lake County, Indiana, not far from the southern shore of Lake Michigan. In its early years it served as a summer retreat for steel-mill workers from the surrounding industrial corridor; many of the first houses had no heat or running water, built only for the warmer months. When United States Steel began building the city of Gary just to the west in nineteen oh six, property owners in New Chicago imagined their town becoming home to industry managers and executives. That vision did not fully materialize, but New Chicago incorporated in nineteen oh eight and settled into the working-class fabric of the Calumet Region, part of the dense, steel-shaped world stretching along Indiana's Lake Michigan shore.