Living on the Line

 John Hmurovic
September 2025

We humans have problems trying to wrap our heads around things we cannot see, like the Holy Ghost, the ozone layer, and the state line. A better understanding of the Holy Ghost might give us a shot at world peace: A priest or minister could help us with that. If we better understood the ozone layer maybe we would solve global warming: An environmentalist might explain it to us. If we better understood the state line maybe we could…. uh…um...hmm. Oh! Maybe we would do better at the Whiting Public Library’s Trivia Night? We can help with that.

We are talking about the state line because in Whiting-Robertsdale we may have more of it than any other community in the state. It is above us and it is alongside us. The line to our north may be the toughest part to imagine because most of us would say our northern border is Lake Michigan. But does that mean where the beach ends and the water begins? Nope, we know that changes all the time, especially on days when storms from the north stir up waves that flood Whiting Park’s road.

The idea of a fun time for surveyors is to debate exactly where the state line is on our Lake Michigan shore. But if your goal is to be ready for Trivia Night, you only need to know that it is ten miles north of the southernmost point of the lake. If you are looking for a weekend excursion, take a half-hour drive to Marquette Park in Gary to stand at that point. Bring your camera, there is even a sign for your family to stand in front of to prove you were there.

The state line was not always in Lake Michigan. Indiana became a state in 1816. At the time there was much discussion about state boundaries. If the original line they drew was still in place, we would be rooting for the Wolverines and Spartans on college football night instead of the Hoosiers and Boilermakers. The Michigan and Indiana line was ten miles south of where it is today, which means at least part of Whiting-Robertsdale would have been in Michigan. But Indiana’s leaders wanted a piece of the lake. Debate all you want about whether we would be better off or worse off living in Michigan and having to learn that cute Michigan thing of pointing to our hand to show what part of the state we are from, Congress gave Indiana what it wanted.

The dirty job of figuring out exactly where that line was fell to the surveyors. As Aaron Helman recently wrote in the South Bend News-Times, a surveyor named John A. Harris got the job of surveying the line in 1827. “He used the tools of the day,” Helman wrote, “chains, compasses, and a healthy amount of guesswork – and marked the border with wooden posts and blazed trees.”

Those markers are long gone, leaving the exact location still up for debate even after others have tried to clarify it. But it is not really a big issue these days, especially at our end of the line. All we need to know is that the imaginary line is out there in the water somewhere, about ten miles away. Plus, it is fun to say that we border Illinois and Michigan, isn’t it?

 We are all far more familiar with the Illinois State Line. We figured that one out a long time ago. Back in the late 1800s, Chicago declared that it was illegal to bet on horse races. All the men who made big bucks off the lost wages of Chicago gamblers came up with an idea to keep their pockets full. They built a horse racing track across the state line, near to where Wal-Mart is today. It was so close to the state line that if an inebriated gambler sitting on the top row of the grandstand in the Hoosier state fell backwards, he would land with a splat in Illinois.

Since 2020, a huge flag flies on our side of the state line close to the lake’s shoreline. If that is not enough to help you get your geographical bearings, there’s a welcome to Indiana sign on Indianapolis Boulevard, as well as cheaper gas prices, cigarette shops, and fireworks stores to tell you you’re in the land of lower taxes and poorer school districts.  

But the most interesting indication that you are in Indiana is one most Whiting-Robertsdale residents have never seen, even though it has been here long before any of us were born, or even before our great-grandparents or recent Presidents were born.

Sitting right on the line is an obelisk which, if you do not know, is a tall four-sided column with a pointy top. It is a monument built in 1838, and it is still here, in the Whiting-Robertsdale community, sort of. To be precise, half of it is in the Robertsdale section of Hammond, and half is in Chicago, because it is “on the line.”

If you have not seen it, do not feel bad. It is tough to get to. The only way to directly reach it from Indiana is to take the lakefront biking/walking trail west of the Hammond Marina and Bird Sanctuary. If you are not the physical fitness type, you can drive to it from the Chicago side. You must turn into Calumet Park and then make an immediate turn right onto Avenue G. Keep going, even after you begin to wonder if you are going the right way. Keep going until you see a brick archway that served as the entrance gate to the Commonwealth Edison power plant that once stood there. The state line monument is just before the archway. As a bonus, go through the archway to get a close look at the huge flag on the border.

But spend a little time at the 1838 obelisk and give it some respect. Nothing in Lake County is older than it. Nothing except two structures in Chicago are older than it. Appreciate the fact that even though it weighs 38,000 pounds and stands fifteen-and a -half feet tall, someone built it in what was then a total wilderness. In 1838, there was no one living in Whiting-Robertsdale, although Native Americans were hunting here and harvesting berries off the many bushes that lined our shoreline. There were not even any tracks carrying trains that might trap the Native Americans from getting out of the waterfront area for what seemed like hours. Even Chicago had only four thousand residents back then.  

Also, give some respect to the surveyors. When Indiana became a state in 1816, the first part of surveying its western boundary was fairly easy. The boundary follows the Wabash River north from the point where it enters the Ohio River. It continues on to Vincennes, Indiana’s first city. From Vincennes the boundary continues along the Wabash. However, at Vincennes, the surveyors received instructions to draw a line extending northward from the riverbank. Going north the Wabash twists and turns, like rivers do, but soon it curves east. When that line last touches the Wabash, the line, not the river, becomes the boundary. The boundary then continues north in a straight line to Lake Michigan.

Simple enough? Well, when Illinois became a state in 1818, some people wanted to know the exact location of the state line. Once again, they called on our friends, the surveyors. Indiana and Illinois formed a team of surveyors headed by John Tipton from Indiana, and Samuel McClintoc from Illinois. The team left Vincennes on May 29, 1821. They headed into areas that were rugged, there were no roads. If there were people, they were Native Americans or a handful of settlers of European descent.

The first part of their journey north was the easiest. They traveled through forests. Then, when they reached the Vermillion River, they passed into a prairie area. In a 205 mile walk from Vincennes to Lake Michigan, they had just thirty-six miles to go when they reached the Kankakee River, which would later become the southern border of Lake County. Soon, they became the first Hoosiers to grumble about Lake County. They complained that the journey through our part of the state was “laborious, disagreeable, and toilsome,” according to an 1821 newspaper report in The Indiana Centinel.

Their first complaint was about crossing the Kankakee. They described it as “three chains wide,” which is about two hundred feet. From there, according to the newspaper, they “suffered privations sufficient to sicken any person of common nerve and constitution.” Working their way through the future Lake County, they came across a “chain of almost impassible ponds,” which ran parallel to the Kankakee.

Progress remained difficult as they neared Lake Michigan and encountered sandy ridges. They spent days “wading through ponds and marshes beneath a broiling sun, beset with piratical flies and satirical mosquitoes.”    

They knew they were close to Lake Michigan, where Tipton said they were hoping to find high and dry ground overlooking the water. When they arrived at the area where the monument now stands, they were,” the newspaper said, “very much disappointed.” Tipton said they found nothing but low, marshy prairie and ponds bordering the lake. The only high ground overlooking the water were light bluffs formed by drifting sand.

The Tipton and McClintoc team of surveyors drove a pine pole into the ground to mark the boundary. It was precisely 159.359 miles due north from the banks of Wabash, or about ten miles southwest of Terre Haute. It is a perfectly straight line that runs at 87 degrees 30 minutes west longitude. Memorize that for Trivia Night. The pole did not survive, but seventeen years later, in 1838, the boundary marker was constructed in its place.

The marker was built just feet from Lake Michigan. Over time, industry filled the lakeshore, pushing the shoreline further north, and leaving the monument further from the shore. Gradually, it became surrounded by weeds and brush. For years, few could reach it. Some who did, covered it with graffiti. In the 1980s, a group of preservationists from Chicago’s East Side worked to save it. They found a powerful ally in Allen J. Benson. He was an executive in Commonwealth Edison, the owner of the power plant that once stood along the lakefront at the state line, and which was the nearest neighbor to the monument. Benson was able to get his company to help rehabilitate and relocate the obelisk.

In 1988, they moved the obelisk 191 feet north of its 1838 location. Benson died before completion of the project. The area around the monument was named Allen J. Benson Park.

The new location of the monument put it close to the main gate of the power plant, within sight of the security guards who worked at that gate. The power plant closed in the 2010s. The guards left, they tore down the plant in 2014, and within a year someone stole three of the four plaques that were on the monument.

In the years that followed more people recognized a need to improve the space around the structure. In 2021, the cities of Hammond and Chicago joined forces to improve the space around the marker and create the plaza that sits there today. In 2002, the City of Chicago declared it was a historic landmark.

If you like local history, it is worth the trip to see it. You will not find anything older in all of Lake County.