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The two most historic areas at Indiana Dunes National Park are Bailly Homestead and Chellberg Farm. They’re both located near each other in Porter, Indiana.
Visiting
A 2.1 mile loop trail connects Bailly Homestead and Chellberg Farm. I recommend combining it with the Little Calumet River Trail, which would make it a 3.7 mile loop. This entry focuses solely on the Bailly/Chellberg Trail.
The homes are only open on certain days during the summer (check the calendar on the official website) but there are several interpretive panels on the properties. There’s no admission to visit when the homes are open.
Bailly Homestead
I started the trail in a clockwise directed from the parking lot. It’s a short 0.3 mile trail through the forest until you come to a clearing where Bailly Homestead is located.
Joseph Bailly (1774-1835), one of the first settlers in Northwest Indiana, was a French-Canadian fur trader from Québec. He settled the region in 1822, establishing fur trading posts at the crossroads of several important trails. They were the only stopping place for travelers between Detroit and Chicago. Bailly acquired the homestead in the 1830s. He began construction on the home in 1835 but never lived to see it completed.
There are a few other buildings on the property as well. The first one you come to is a two-story log building used as a kitchen. From 1866 to 1869, it was used as a chapel. Joseph Bailly and his stepdaughter, Theresa de la Vigne, both died in the building.
A storehouse made out of good logs from an old trading post used by Bailly sits nearby.
The brick house on the property was built by Bailly’s daughter, Rose Bailly Howe, in 1874. The ground floor was used as a kitchen and the second floor as the living quarters.
Bailly Cemetery
From the Bailly Homestead, I continued along the loop trail until I came to a spur trail. It crossed the road and led to the Bailly family cemetery. The cemetery is about a mile north of the house.
A structure at the site contains the graves of Bailly, his wife Marie, daughter Rose, and son-in-law Francis Howe.
Chellberg Farm
Back on the main trail, it was about a ¼ mile of hiking through beautiful wooded scenery and a few boardwalks until I arrived at Chellberg Farm.
Anders and Johanna Chellberg (Kjellberg), along with their young son Charles, were Swedish immigrants who came to the United States in 1863. They purchased the land for Chellberg Farm in 1869 in an area that had maintained a strong Swedish community for several years. The family lived on the farm until Anders’ grandson Carl sold it to the National Park Service in 1972.
The brick house was built in 1885 to replace a wooden house destroyed by fire a year earlier. It contains a kitchen, parlor, bedrooms, and dining room. The house was remodeled over the years and restored by the National Park Service in the 1980s.
A barn built in the 1870s stands north of the house. Windows were added in the early 1900s when the family ran a dairy farm. A concrete floor was installed in 1938. Near the barn are a chicken coop and corncrib. The corncrib was designed and built in 1941 by Carl Chellberg.
A few steps north of the barn is a tractor shed. Some old farming equipment and carriages were sitting inside when I walked by.
Finally, to the south of the house is a maple sugar shack. It’s still used every year to make maple syrup.
