A cemetery on a sand ridge
In the woods of Indiana Dunes National Park, in the town of Porter next to Chesterton, a small cemetery sits on top of a sand ridge. It doesn’t look like most graveyards. There are no rows of headstones. Instead there is a raised, walled platform of concrete, with a stairway and memorial plaques on its outer walls.
The Bailly family’s graves are still there, under the sand that fills it. That sounds like the start of a ghost story. It is really a family story, about a fur trader, his daughter and his granddaughter, and how hard they worked to protect one small hill.
The Bailly family
Joseph Bailly was a French-Canadian fur trader, born in Quebec in 1774. He brought his family to the Calumet region of northwest Indiana in the early 1820s. Most sources say 1822; the National Park Service says about 1824. He set up a trading post near the Little Calumet River, close to where two important Indigenous trails met. His wife, Marie, had been raised among the Odawa (Ottawa) people.
In 1827 the family buried their son Robert on the ridge, and Joseph marked the grave with a large wooden cross. Family tradition called it the first burial there, though a 1976 Park Service report noted older grave markers just outside the later walls. Joseph died in 1835 and was buried on the same hill. Over the years other family members were laid to rest there too, among them his daughter Rose and, later, his granddaughter Frances.
The family home nearby, the Bailly Homestead, was named a National Historic Landmark in 1962. Both the homestead and the cemetery are now part of the national park.
Fences, walls and neighbors
The Baillys were not the only people who used the hill. Neighbors buried their dead there as well, and many of them were Swedish immigrants who had settled in the area.
In 1866, Joseph’s daughter Rose Bailly Howe put a wooden fence around the family graves and asked neighbors to stop burying there. Not everyone did. While Rose and her family were in Europe from 1869 to 1874, at least three Swedish immigrants were buried on the hill.
In the 1880s, Rose replaced the fence with a limestone wall six feet high, topped with iron spikes. The Park Service dates the wall to 1885. A 1976 Park Service report gives dates from about 1880 to 1885. Either way, by the end of the century the family plot was a walled enclosure on top of the ridge.
Filled with sand
Rose died in 1891, and the family property passed to her daughter, Frances R. Howe, Joseph’s granddaughter. Frances worried about the old cemetery’s future, and about vandalism in particular. In 1914, she hired Theodore Stephens, a builder from Chesterton, to remake it.
Stephens built a new concrete block wall around the old limestone one and filled the gap between them with concrete. Then he filled the space inside the walls with sand. The family graves were not moved. They are still there, beneath the sand. He added a stairway and moved several of the memorial plaques to the outside of the new wall. Frances also bought a tall cross in California, and Stephens set it in place on top.
During the work, the crew came across unmarked graves of earlier neighbors outside the family plot. Those burials were moved just outside the new walls.
Frances planned a drive and steps leading up from the road, but she died in 1917 before that part was built. She is buried in the cemetery with her family.
Legend and record
A graveyard sealed under sand, with a cross on top, is the kind of place that gathers stories. In our La Porte After Dark series we called it the graveyard that was buried in sand, and the walled platform in the quiet woods can feel a little eerie. But we found no documented ghost story tied to Bailly Cemetery. Any tale of hauntings on the ridge is a legend, the kind people tell about many old burial grounds, and nothing in the record supports it.
The oddest detail here is true, and it comes from the builder himself. Stephens made a duplicate of the plaque for Francis and Rose Howe. In his own account of the job, he wrote that one letter, the N in “Francis,” ended up set backward. He noticed it only after the plaque was finished and left it as it was. The Park Service tells the same story about the reversed letter.
Visiting Bailly Cemetery
Bailly Cemetery belongs to Indiana Dunes National Park. A short out-and-back trail branches off the Bailly-Chellberg trails and climbs to the cemetery. Parts of those trails are sometimes closed for construction or repairs, so check the park’s website before you go, and respect any closed-area signs.
Please treat the hill as what it is: a family’s resting place, and the resting place of neighbors whose graves are no longer marked. Stay on the trail and leave everything as you find it. The Bailly Homestead nearby tells more of the family’s story. For more of the region’s past, see our La Porte County history page.
Questions
Why was Bailly Cemetery filled with sand?
In 1914, Frances R. Howe, Joseph Bailly’s granddaughter, hired Chesterton builder Theodore Stephens to wrap the old limestone wall in concrete and fill the inside with sand, to protect the family graves.
Are the Bailly family graves still there?
Yes. The family graves were not moved. They are still inside the walls, beneath the sand.
Is Bailly Cemetery haunted?
We found no documented ghost story about it. Any haunting tale is a legend. The strangest true detail is a backward letter on a duplicate plaque, described by the builder himself.
Can you visit Bailly Cemetery?
Yes. It is part of Indiana Dunes National Park, reached by a short trail off the Bailly-Chellberg trails. Check the park’s website for trail closures before you go.
Sources: National Park Service: Bailly Cemetery · Historical Images of Porter County: Bailly Cemetery Historic Structure Report (NPS, 1976) · Historical Images of Porter County: Theodore Stephens, "Bailly Cemetery - Roman Style" (1956) · Wikipedia: Bailly Cemetery · National Park Service: The Bailly Homestead · Wikipedia: Joseph Bailly Homestead · Wikipedia: Joseph Bailly · National Park Service: Bailly/Chellberg trails · Indiana State Library: Frances Howe family photographs (biographical note)