New Wildland Urban Interface Fuel Break Protects Community in Indiana Dunes National Park

NPS engine crews burning the northern edge of the Cowles Dune prescribed fire in Dune Acres, Indiana in 2017.

NPS

The town of Dune Acres, Indiana has a documented problem with wildfires threatening the community going back to just after its founding in 1923. Newspaper articles from 1934 describe the perils of protecting the small enclave on the Lake Michigan shoreline from the threat of wildfires. At that time when the town was threatened, all residents would pitch in and help fight the blaze.

With the founding of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1966, park rangers became part of the force protecting the small community. The town had a small volunteer fire department that maintained two “brush trucks.” Additional protection came from the surrounding communities. In 1986, the National Park Service conducted the first ever prescribed fire at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Forty-five acres of land on the southeast side of town were burned as a test of prescribed fire in the Midwest.

In the years since, the NPS has conducted 27 prescribed fires around Dune Acres. The burns had dual purposes - to restore and manage natural resources and to reduce hazard fuels, in order to reduce the threat of a wildfire.

The 1-mile fuel break stretches through flat and hilly terrain.

NPS

To reduce the threat of wildfire and ease prescribed fire preparations, the fire staff of the Great Lakes Fire Management Zone, based at Indiana Dunes National Park, constructed a permanent fuel break along the southwest property line of Dune Acres in 2019. This fuel break provides a prepared defensive break to protect the community from wildfire encroachment, while at the same time maintaining the northern edge of the 800-acre Cowles Dune Prescribed Fire Unit.

This approximately 1-mile long fuel break crosses NPS and Dune Acres properties and will be maintained on a yearly basis in cooperation between the national park and the town.