News Release

 Diana of the Dunes Dare Sunset Hikes offered at National Park

Date: June 18, 2021
Contact: Kimberly Swift, 219-395-1622

INDIANA DUNES NATIONAL PARK: Dare to be like Diana of the Dunes and hike over 250 steps along a one mile trail at West Beach to end at the shoreline and watch the sunset with park rangers. Every Saturday beginning June 26 through August 28, meet a ranger at the Diana Dunes Dare trail head at West Beach at 7:30 p.m. This one hour hike will challenge you physically and entertain you with stories about the real Diana of the Dunes.  

As you hike the trail, rangers will share the true story of this remarkable woman known as Diana of the Dunes. Her real name was Alice Mabel Gray, and she lived in a shack in the dunes for nine years, beginning in 1915, and spawned many legends and ghost stories. The facts about Alice Gray are even more interesting than the legends as she was a well-educated mathematics scholar who became disillusioned with her life in Chicago and took a train to the dunes in 1915 and never moved back to the city.     

West Beach is located at 376 N. County Line Road, Gary, Indiana. For more information about this or other programs at Indiana Dunes National Park, please contact our program information line at 219-395-1824 or visit the park’s website at www.nps.gov/indu or Facebook page at www.facebook.com/IndianaDunesNPS.    

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Indiana Dunes National Park is one of 423 units of the National Park Service ranging from Yellowstone to the Statue of Liberty. Located in Northwest Indiana, the national park includes 15 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and 15,000 acres of biodiverse beaches, woods, prairies, and marshes. Up to 3 million visitors come to the Indiana Dunes each year.