Early history , the statue was installed in 1931. But nothing came of the Town of Bailly or the "
Indiana City" laid out nearby in 1837. Around the same time, the pioneering botanist
Henry Chandler Cowles conducted early studies of
ecological succession in
Miller Woods. Among these were films by the
Selig Polyscope Company, and the Chicago
Essanay Studios productions
The Plum Tree (1914) and
The Fall of Montezuma (1912), in which the Miller beach represented the coast of Mexico. Millerites rallied to incorporate their community as the Town of Miller in 1907, hoping to prevent annexation by Gary following the founding of that then booming city in 1906. Gary mayor
Thomas Knotts first attempted to annex Miller in 1910 as part of a larger territorial dispute with East Chicago. According to the 1910 census, at that time the Town of Miller had a population of 638 people. This initial annexation effort was successfully resisted. In the 1910s, the Gary city government and
US Steel became increasingly aware of the need for a lakefront park for the millworkers and their families. In view of this, Miller and Gary formed a joint parks department in 1915 to administer part of the land that is now
Marquette Park. Encountering difficulties purchasing this land, however, Gary sought to annex Miller so that it could seize the property by
eminent domain. In 1918, the town board voted to accept annexation, ending Miller's political independence.
Part of Gary After its annexation, the community continued to grow. So did its tourist industry: Drusilla Carr, proprietress of Carr's Beach (now Lake Street Beach), collected rent on more than a hundred beach cottages. With attractions including a shooting gallery, bath house, miniature railroad and "night spots", Carr's Beach was Gary's most popular summer destination in the late 1920s. With the construction and expansion of Marquette Park in the 1930s, and an influx of affluent residents from other parts of Gary in the late 1940s, the neighborhood became increasingly a resort community. It also became a segregated white community, with African-Americans banned from the beaches, and also from the neighborhood except for day workers. In 1967,
Richard Hatcher was elected mayor of Gary, becoming the first African-American mayor of any major US city. The voting in his election was almost entirely along racial lines, with white Democrats voting
en masse for the Republican candidate in the
general election. A key exception to this was in Miller Beach, where Hatcher obtained decisive support from a group of primarily Jewish Millerites who would oppose the
Wallace presidential campaign in 1968 and had subsequently supported Hatcher in his bid for the Gary Common Council. Fearing that the
white flight occurring elsewhere in Gary would be replicated in Miller Beach, local residents formed the Miller Citizens Corporation (MCC) in 1971. Unlike similar groups elsewhere in the city, the goal of the MCC was not to prevent integration, but to slow the process so that events did not spiral out of control. The MCC worked to stem flight from the community with techniques including positive publicity about Miller's advantages, and banning "For Sale" signs. As part of this effort, the organization also took on environmental issues, including banning
sand mining in residential areas. The National Lakeshore was founded in 1966 through the efforts of Senator
Paul Douglas, ending a struggle that had begun in the 1890s. The Lakeshore's initial boundaries, however, did not include the Miller Woods and Long Lake areas in Miller Beach. After the death of Senator Douglas in 1976, a Lakeshore expansion bill gained bipartisan support in Congress, as a memorial to him. With the bill's passage, the Lakeshore was expanded by 4,300 acres, including Miller Woods and Long Lake. In 2002, faced with plummeting
property tax revenue due to a state-imposed change in assessments of industrial property, the city of Gary nearly doubled tax rates, leading to widespread outcry. Together with other organizations around the state, the Miller Citizens Corporation lobbied successive state governments to impose
tax caps. The tax caps became law in 2008, and became part of the state constitution in 2010.
Demographics in the 1950s.
Simone de Beauvoir described it as "a ravishing little house hidden in the trees". Miller Beach began as a working-class town with a primarily
Swedish-American and
German-American population. The neighborhood's demographic makeup became wealthier and more diverse beginning in the late 1940s as it attracted affluent residents from elsewhere. In 1950, Miller supplanted the
Horace Mann neighborhood as Gary's wealthiest area, a distinction it has retained ever since. Along with other areas on Gary's periphery, Miller saw strong 70% growth during the 1950s. During this period, Miller Beach developed a sizable Jewish population. The first house in Miller Beach to be purchased by an African-American family was sold in 1964. Unlike other Gary neighborhoods that saw abrupt
white flight and economic dislocation during this period, Miller Beach underwent a stable and peaceful transition through the 1970s to an integrated population with most of the new African-American residents being "upwardly mobile" black professionals. Miller Beach and the previously little-developed
Westside neighborhood were the only areas in Gary to experience population growth during the 1970s. Since early in the community's history, many people have moved to Miller Beach from nearby Chicago, "seeking a getaway from the city". Early examples included nonconformist
Alice Mabel Gray, known as "Diana of the Dunes", who frequented Miller Beach and nearby
Ogden Dunes in the early 1900s. In the 1950s, as it gained prominence as a resort area. Miller's many new residents included author
Nelson Algren, who bought a house on the East Lagoon with the proceeds from the
Pulitzer Prize and
The Man With the Golden Arm.{{Cite news ==Natural environment==