1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Indiana Dunes National Park Designation Act . 2. Findings Congress finds that— (1) the Great Lakes form the largest freshwater system on Earth; (2) Lake Michigan is— (A) the second largest Great Lake by volume; and (B) the only Great Lake located wholly within the United States; (3) the southern shore of Lake Michigan includes some of the most geologically and biologically diverse areas in the United States; (4) the unique features that comprise the southern shore of Lake Michigan, also known as the Indiana Dunes , were formed over a period of 12,000 years by natural forces, including glaciers, wind, and water; (5) glacial melting and fluctuations in the water level resulted in the formation of as many as 7 shorelines along the southern shore of Lake Michigan; (6) the process by which the southern shore of Lake Michigan was formed resulted in the biologically diverse beaches, sand dunes, and inter-dune wetlands that can be seen in the southern shore of Lake Michigan today; (7) Indian tribes, including the Miami and Potawatomi Indian tribes, inhabited the Indiana Dunes region for over 10,000 years; (8) local conservation efforts to preserve the Indiana Dunes began as early as 1899 when Henry Cowles, a botanist from the University of Chicago who is known for being one of the founders of contemporary ecological study and thought, published an article entitled Ecological Relations of the Vegetation on Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan in the Botanical Gazette, bringing international attention to the intricate ecosystems on the Indiana Dunes; (9) on October 30, 1916, 1 month after the establishment of the National Park Service, Stephen Mather, the first Director of the National Park Service, held hearings in Chicago, Illinois, to gauge public sentiment on establishing a large portion of the southern shore of Lake Michigan as one of the first national parks in the United States, to be known as the Sand Dunes National Park