Pokagon State Park: A Gift and a Name

In nineteen twenty-five, residents of Steuben County pooled their money, bought five hundred eighty acres along Lake James, and gave it to the state of Indiana as a Christmas gift. The state added more land, and construction began the following year.

In nineteen twenty-seven, the park's commissioner proposed naming it for Leopold and Simon Pokagon, father and son, the last notable leaders of the Potawatomi people who had lived and fished around these same lakes in the early eighteen hundreds. The name passed unanimously. Seven years later, the Civilian Conservation Corps moved in, building the beach, the inn, shelter houses, and trails between nineteen thirty-four and nineteen forty-two. Company Five Fifty-Six did most of the work. The CCC structures are now part of a National Register Historic District. The park named for the Potawatomi leaders still draws visitors to the lakes the Potawatomi once called home.