Dune Park (NICTD)

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Dune Park
NICTD station

The commuter line serving Dune Park, shown in Dark South Shore Burgundy on this schematic, serves Chicago's eastern suburbs in Illinois and Indiana

Station statistics

Address

U.S. Highway 12 and Indiana State Road 49

Coordinates

41°38′41″N, 87°3′39″W

Lines

South Shore Line

Parking

Yes; free for passengers

Bicycle facilities

Yes; bike rack

Other information

Opened

1985

Accessible

Owned by

NICTD

Fare zone

Dune Park is a station in unincorporated Porter County, Indiana located north of the municipality of Chesterton, Indiana. It is used by South Shore Line trains, and serves as the headquarters of the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD), the umbrella agency that operates the South Shore Line. It is located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 12 and Indiana State Road 49.

Dune Park is a comparatively new station, built in 1985 to serve as a regional commuter station and as NICTD's corporate headquarters. The station was designed to replace the South Shore's former nearby station at Tremont, Indiana, a location that was becoming depopulated with the expansion of the nearby Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

The Dune Park station was built with substantial parking space to consolidate local commuter service, and in 1992 the South Shore Line ceased to offer its traditional flag stop service to Dune Acres, Indiana and Kemil Road, several miles west and east of Dune Park respectively. Users of these low-volume stops were instructed to instead use the consolidated Dune Park station.

"Dune Park" is so called because it the station is physically surrounded by land owned by the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Major units of the National Lakeshore are accessible from the station on U.S. 12 and the Calumet Trail. The station is also adjacent to the Indiana Dunes State Park, which is accessible to the north via Indiana 49.

Dune Park was also the name of a former section of the Indiana Dunes, between Ogden Dunes, Indiana and Dune Acres, that was physically leveled in the 1960s to create the Port of Indiana steelmaking and industrial complex.