Memorial Statue of Father Jacques Marquette (Gary, Indiana)

 statue, memorial, monument, draw only border

Marquette Park, originally named "Lake Front Park", has a storied past. Long before there was a park at this location it was not only the site of the mouth of the Grand Calumet river, but contained a town laid out first by Joseph Bailly, an early settler in the region. Indiana City remained on the maps for many years, but never had more than a few shacks on it. The land, a swampy wetland, had to be drained by local contractor Gus Strom after it was given to the City of Gary by United States Steel in 1919 for a park. It was a focal point in the controversy surrounding the annexation of Miller by Gary the year before.

A close-up map of the park region on the Chanute Pages shows the original course of the river to the mouth of the Grand Calumet. For years people have believed that the mouth of the river, permanently closed in by US Steel when it built the Gary Works in 1906, was at the west side of the park, but testimony of two 'old timers', Bill Carr and Myron Esmiel, who died at the age of 96 in the late 1970's, puts the mouth at the east side, approximately where Montgomery Street is now. Like the Chicago river mouth, it was a low swampy area which in the dry season would often see lake water flowing into the river rather than out into the lake.

From 1919 until 1932 the park was known Lake Front Park, and the pavilion as Lake Front Park Pavilion. In 1931 W. P. Gleason, the Superintendent of the Gary Steel Works and Superintendent of the Gary Park Department, commissioned Henry Hering of New York create a bronze statue of Father Pere Marquette to be placed at the gateway to the park, which was renamed Marquette Park with the dedication of the statue in July of 1932.