Munster is a suburban town in North Township, Lake County, Indiana, United States. It is in the Chicago metropolitan area, approximately southeast of the Chicago Loop, and shares municipal boundaries with Hammond to the north, Highland to the east, Dyer and Schererville to the south, and Lansing and Lynwood directly west of the Illinois border. Its population was 23,603 at the 2010 US Census. Geography Munster is located at (41.551457, -87.501431), at a point on an ancient shoreline of Lake Michigan (known as the Calumet Shoreline) which is today Ridge Road. This ridge runs east and west through the north part of town, hence the town's nickname "Town on the Ridge". The town's boundaries contain three small lakes, one of which, located within Centennial Park, is marshy and undeveloped. Munster is bordered on the north by the Little Calumet River, a shallow river surrounded by a thin strip of wooded area; and on the West by the Illinois state line. According to the 2010 census, Munster has a total area of , of which (or 98.95%) is land and (or 1.05%) is water. History The Ibach House and Stallbohm Barn-Kaske House are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Early history The earliest known inhabitants of the area were the Potawatomi. Although a village did not exist in what was to become Munster's town boundaries, a trail along the dry sandy ridge now known as Ridge Road was well traveled by the indigenous inhabitants. Today, Munster's downtown area, the Town Hall, Police and Fire Department headquarters, the Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, and the Munster Post Office are all situated on Ridge Road. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the area that is today Munster was part of land claimed by France as French territory. In the 1760s the British claimed the land where the Potawatomi lived as part of the British Empire. Twenty years later George Rogers Clark overran the British in the American Revolutionary War, claiming the land for the newly independent United States of America. In the 1850s, as the numbers of Native Americans dwindled, pioneer settlers began to inhabit the area which would become Munster to grow crops and provide dairy products to the profitable markets in Chicago. When Jacob Munster, a young man from the Netherlands who until the 1860s spelled his surname "Monster," opened an area general store complete