The Calumet Park Rock Carvings

Calumet Park, just north of the Indiana border, is lined with around half a mile of limestone blocks bearing more than 1,200 rock carvings. That’s the largest concentration of carvings anywhere along the Chicago lakefront, where more than 6,000 carvings survive, most made by anonymous creators starting around 1930. The abundance of Coast Guard sailers stationed at the southern end of the park and the many fisherman who work the shoreline just to the north must have contributed their fair share. In both cases they are likely to be folks with time on their hands.

Another factor is the high volume of what I call autograph rocks — blocks where many people, sometimes dozens, have each carved their names. These exist all up and down the lakefront but are especially plentiful near the Calumet Park Coast Guard station.

The Park’s roots go back to 1904, though when the limestone was installed is unknown. The stepstones are in generally good condition. The breakwater built to protect the former U.S. Steel plant just to the north must also calm the waters along the Calumet Park shore. In addition, much of the limestone revetment is fronted with a steel seawall at the water line. That makes it more like the shore north of Montrose Beach — where the limestone also is in reasonably good shape — but unlike most of the surviving revetments on the South Side, which show much more wear and tear from the lake and the weather. As a result Calumet Park, which also has ample parking, is a particularly accessible place to view Chicago’s rock carvings, similar to Foster Avenue Beach on the North Side.

Click the map image below to download finder maps for The Calumet Park carvings. They are printable and also interactive. Clicking on a carving in the pdf will link to a photo of that carving.  Below the map is a sequential galleries of the most interesting carvings, running north to south.

Calumet Park Gallery

Find lakefront carvings by location.