Q 01/05

The park's western section runs along the shore to Broadway in the downtown of which steel city?

A) Hammond

B) East Chicago

C) Gary

D) Whiting

Answer · why

C) Gary

About 15 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline stretch from Michigan City west, interrupted by steel mills and a port.

Q 02/05

Indiana Dunes became the nation's 61st national park in which year?

A) 2019

B) 2004

C) 2011

D) 2016

Answer · why

A) 2019

It had been the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore since 1966; the change came in an appropriations act signed on February 15.

Q 03/05

Why did the Park Service oppose upgrading Indiana Dunes to a national park?

A) It fit better with lakeshores and seashores

B) It was too polluted by the steel mills

C) It had too few visitors to qualify

D) Indiana refused to give up the state park

Answer · why

A) It fit better with lakeshores and seashores

Deputy Director Paul Daniel Smith testified the change broke naming conventions; Congress did it anyway in a 2019 appropriations act.

Q 04/05

Which Chicago botanist's 1899 dune plant study launched the movement to save the dunes?

A) Aldo Starker Leopold

B) John Merle Coulter

C) Stephen Tyng Mather

D) Henry Chandler Cowles

Answer · why

D) Henry Chandler Cowles

His work on plant succession helped found the science of ecology; a bog and a bay in the park bear his name.

Q 05/05

Which Danish botanist's work inspired Cowles to study dune succession?

A) Niels Bohr

B) Carl Linnaeus

C) Eugen Warming

D) Wilhelm Johannsen

Answer · why

C) Eugen Warming

He visited Warming in Copenhagen in 1905, and his translation of the term helped popularise the word ecology in the United States.