Trails for Hiking and Biking

Yes — all trails in Miller Beach are free and open year round.

You can bring your bike on the South Shore Commuter Rail Line to get to Miller Station. There are free, year-round designated bike trains. Space is first-come, first-served. Check mysouthshoreline.com for bike-friendly train times before you go.

Yes — dogs are welcome on all trails. Please keep all dogs on a leash.

Yes — the Lake Street Bike Path is a paved off-street path running from Miller Station directly to Lake Street Beach and Miller Woods Beach. Bring your bike on the South Shore Line to Miller Station — free on designated bike train cars, year-round, on a first-come, first-served basis. Check mysouthshoreline.com for bike-friendly train times before you go.

Yes — GPTC buses have front bike racks. Hop off at Miller Beach and ride north on the Lake Street Bike Path straight to the lake. No car needed, no parking hassle.

The Miller Woods Trail — Paul H. Douglas Trail is Miller Beach's signature hike. The 3.5 mile round trip winds through oak savanna, dune and swale habitat, and ends at Miller Woods Beach, the westernmost NPS beach on Lake Michigan. Every May a bloom of millions of lupines makes it one of the most spectacular wildflower hikes in the Midwest.

The Marquette Greenway is a 60 mile regional paved trail stretching from Chicago to New Buffalo, Michigan. Miller Beach's 6 mile section passes exclusively through Indiana Dunes National Park lands and is among the most scenic sections of the entire trail. The main trailhead is at the Douglas Nature Center parking lot.

Yes — the Paul H. Douglas Center ADA Loop is a one mile paved hard pack loop suitable for visitors with disabilities and families with strollers. Enter next to the Paul H. Douglas Center.

Nelson Algren was a National Book Award winning author who lived and wrote at a beach cottage at 6223 Forrest Avenue in Miller Beach from 1949 to 1963 — still visible from the street today. A self-described "reporter of the black and brown world," Algren's writing gave voice to Chicago's poor, marginalized, and working class communities. He wrote The Man with the Golden Arm here — later adapted into a film starring Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak — and A Walk on the Wild Side, which inspired Lou Reed's iconic song of the same name. A lifelong friend and collaborator of African American novelist Richard Wright, Algren was part of the same Chicago literary circle that shaped some of the most important American writing of the 20th century. The Nelson Algren Museum of Miller Beach, housed in the historic 1928 Telephone Building on Lake Street, honors his legacy and is an affiliate of the American Writers Museum. [Visit nelsonalgrenmuseumofmillerbeach.com →]

Alice Gray, known as Diana of the Dunes, was an early 20th century figure who lived in the West Beach section of Indiana Dunes National Park and was a frequent visitor to the Town of Miller. Her story is part of the rich human history woven into the West Beach trail system.

Simone de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher whose 1949 work The Second Sex is considered one of the most influential works of feminist philosophy of the 20th century. She visited Nelson Algren at his Miller Beach cottage in 1950 and 1951, part of a relationship that began when they met in Chicago in 1947 and was documented in over 300 published love letters.

De Beauvoir was a close friend of African American novelist Richard Wright — who was himself Algren's longtime friend and collaborator. Through her American years and her friendship with Wright, de Beauvoir was directly exposed to the lived experience of racial oppression in the United States.

Scholars have documented that Wright provided her with the theoretical model of oppression she used in The Second Sex — drawing parallels between the oppression of African Americans and the oppression of women that became central to the book's argument. She references Wright directly in the book.

The Second Sex went on to influence Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), which helped ignite the second wave feminist movement.