Park Trail GuideTrip planning

Reviewed guide · Midwest

Indiana Dunes National Park

Unit code INDU. Figures retrieved 2026-11-06. Official alerts, fees, and closures are not copied here.

Show on the atlas
A snowy Mnokie Prairie - Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.
Public-domain National Park Service photograph. Credit: Katrina George - NPS. Asset record.
States on the system list
Indiana
Guide region
Midwest. Editorial grouping of the state that contains the centroid, or the first listed state when the point is offshore.
Anniversary-table date
No line under this national park name

Related line in the same table: Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Indiana

Gross area acres
16,267.53

NPS fee acres: 10,664.85. Report date September 30, 2026. Gross area is not the same column as fee ownership.

Boundary centroid
41.6596, -87.0329

Containing shoreline polygon: Indiana. Not an entrance.

Recreation-visit record
Highest monthly mean is in June, July, or August

Highest mean: July. Lowest mean: January. Mean annual total across complete years: 2,415,215 (10 complete years).

On the Chiricahua FAQ, the National Park Service lists Indiana Dunes (2019) among recent redesignations. That sentence does not give a month or a day. It is not a substitute for the anniversaries table.

The monthly record

January: 71,834 mean recreation visitsFebruary: 81,726 mean recreation visitsMarch: 129,185 mean recreation visitsApril: 132,733 mean recreation visitsMay: 222,424 mean recreation visitsJune: 356,561 mean recreation visitsJuly: 447,624 mean recreation visitsAugust: 368,426 mean recreation visitsSeptember: 254,423 mean recreation visitsOctober: 172,610 mean recreation visitsNovember: 95,902 mean recreation visitsDecember: 81,767 mean recreation visitsJFMAMJJASOND
Mean of reported recreation visits by calendar month, 2016–2025. Gold is the lowest mean and rust is the highest. A missing bar was not reported. This is a historic average, not a live crowd count.
Monthly recreation-visit record
MonthMeanLowest yearHighest yearYears in the mean
January71,83456,58886,79710
February81,72668,91593,43010
March129,18590,620219,07010
April132,73391,272234,44210
May222,424142,403396,36210
June356,561240,295550,23510
July447,624308,792594,27210
August368,426204,010470,16010
September254,423167,089405,68810
October172,61082,494253,64010
November95,90252,878144,88110
December81,76730,233131,93110

How to use this guide

Indiana Dunes National Park is on the October 26, 2026 system list, in Indiana. The anniversaries table retrieved with it does not have a line under the national park name. It does have a line for Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. A FAQ answer about Chiricahua lists Indiana Dunes (2019) among recent redesignations and does not give a month or day. This page does not invent the missing day.

The acreage row in the September 30, 2026 workbook does use the national park name. Plan from that row, the centroid, and the park’s own pages. The lake, the industry next door, and the parking rules are not things this guide will guess.

Official pages

These links were checked when the site was built. A working link is not a live feed. If a standard address did not respond, it is omitted.

Nearest other national parks

Distances are great-circle miles between boundary centroids. They are not road distances or travel times.