Tremont: Swallowed by the Dunes

Back in the eighteen thirties, a settlement called City West was platted right along Lake Michigan's shore with ambitions of rivaling Chicago, which at the time was little more than a muddy outpost. The Panic of eighteen thirty-seven ended that dream overnight. Residents relocated slightly inland to a new town called Tremont, which grew its own post office, sawmill, churches, and schools.

A boiler explosion destroyed the sawmill in eighteen seventy-five and the town quietly emptied. When the interurban railroad arrived in nineteen oh eight it briefly revived the name, but the last structures gave way when the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore absorbed the land in the nineteen sixties. There is almost nothing left to see today.

The dunes reclaimed it.