Bailly Homestead

Bailly Homestead is a National Historic Landmark: a group of log, weatherboard and brick buildings in a wooded corner of Indiana Dunes. It preserves the story of an early fur-trading post and pioneer household, but it isn't a drive-up house museum. You'll reach the buildings on foot from the shared Bailly-Chellberg lot. Come for the architecture and history, and plan to see the buildings from the grounds; regular interior hours aren't listed.

The Bailly and Chellberg sites are joined by a trail network, with a 1.1-mile inner loop and a 3.4-mile outer loop. The longer route descends toward the Little Calumet River, crosses a boardwalk and bridge, passes Mnoké Prairie, then returns by the homestead. Expect packed-soil and wood-chip paths, several sets of stairs, and stretches that can be wet or muddy.

The shared lot has paved parking, year-round restrooms, drinking water and three covered picnic shelters; one shelter and the restrooms are wheelchair accessible. The trails themselves aren't wheelchair accessible, and a park entrance pass is required. The picnic shelters are at the lot, not beside the historic buildings.

Joseph Bailly and Marie Le Fevre de la Vigne Bailly arrived around 1824 and established a trading post near the Little Calumet River and two major Indigenous travel routes. Bailly was a French-Canadian trader whose work shifted as the fur trade declined; he also operated an inn and dealt in land.

His relationships with Indigenous communities shaped his influence, including treaty negotiations as U.S. settlement spread. Potawatomi people were forcibly removed in 1838 in the episode remembered as the Trail of Death. Bailly's place in that history belongs alongside the trading-post story, not underneath it.

The main house began as a hewn-log building in 1834–35, then received weatherboard siding and late Victorian and Eastlake details around 1896–1904. A red-brick wall beneath its porch reportedly had to be rebuilt three times before Frances Howe accepted it. From the lawn, frame the house with the small log outbuilding beside it to show how much the complex changed over time.

The brick house, built around 1875, served as a kitchen and studio for Rose Bailly Howe. It was detached from the main house and moved to its current spot in 1904. The Chapel started as a two-story building in the 1820s or 1830s; the Baillys are said to have died there. It was later made one story and shifted several yards, with an apse replacing its exterior fireplace.

The small storehouse dates to before 1835 and is said to have held supplies for Potawatomi visitors traveling toward the Kankakee River in winter. It later became a chicken house. Another two-story log building nearby was assembled around 1900 from salvaged logs of older structures.

After Joseph died, the estate passed to Francis Howe in 1843. Howe sold timber for railroad construction. Later, Joel Wicker recruited Swedish immigrants to work at a sawmill and settle nearby, adding another chapter to the area's cultural history.

The walk links the buildings with mature woods, the Little Calumet River and restored prairie. The river crossing and open prairie make the longer route a different experience from a quick look at the houses, and the connected trail system reflects how people have been drawn to this landscape for thousands of years.