The South Shore Line (officially the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, or NICTD) is a really fun commuter line. America's last interurban (or at least a strong contender to that title) runs from downtown Chicago all the way to the far reaches of South Bend and Munster, a full 90 miles from the city center at it's farthest reach. Just one stop before South Bend is the little-used flag stop of Hudson Lake, serving the lake community of the same name.
Hudson Lake has been a stop since the line's opening in 1908, and technically even before then, when it served a one-time stint as the railroad's western terminus. On June 8th, 1907, with the railroad lagging in it's construction, a special train was chartered to show off it's progress, going from South Bend to Hudson Lake, as far as tracks went at that time, before transferring to a carriage.
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| An undated early photo of Hudson Lake[1] |
As the Lake Shore[2] reached full operating capacity, they marketed Hudson Lake heavily as a quiet weekend getaway from the dirty, industrial cities of Northwest Indiana and Chicago's far South & Southeast sides, including accommodations for picnicking and weekend cottages at the company owned Hudson Lake Park. While the station itself never grew past a small wooden shelter, ridership was healthy, with a casino, hotels, and small lakeside resorts springing up to serve weary city dwellers. The railroad itself owned 'Hudson Lake Park', with picnicking areas and weekend cottages, and sometimes ran special trains for Hudson Lake outings, including one chartered by the Pullman Company totaling eleven cars to carry 900 passengers.
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| a 1911-postmarked postcard showing 'Hotel Hudson', since demolished. The land is now a mobile home park.[3] |
Past this point, Hudson Lake ebbs and fades like many early 20th century resort towns. Hotels were demolished or quietly converted to private homes, the casino became a restaurant, and it generally faded as a known destination in favor of flashier spots opened up by the age of the automobile. In 1994, the NICTD pruned many of it's low ridership flagstops, six in total, including a neighboring stop in New Carlisle. While certainly the more built up town of the two, New Carlisle's stop was the victim of a quirk of municipal fate. The New York Central (later Conrail, now Norfolk Southern) paralleled and cut in front of the South Shore in town, and at some point the bigger railroad had the road cut off to eliminate a grade crossing, making access awkward. With minimal traffic, Hudson Lake, not even 5 minutes up the road and unobstructed as the lines diverged at the town's eastern edge, was seen as enough to absorb the traffic and provide an outpost between Michigan City and the terminus at South Bend.
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Catching up to today, little has changed. Station facilities remain minimal, consisting of a bus shelter for a station building, a surprisingly up to date system map, a small 8-space parking lot (paved, but well on it's way to reverting to gravel), a hanging sign, and a button to remind the coming train to actually stop here (Hudson Lake is a "flag stop", and so unless notified, the train will express past it).
Swinging out to the wider town, the first stop was for some quick food. Digzy Dogs is a charming little spot, built in a heavily refurbished mid-century mobile home next to the tracks. Everything's painted in some nice warm tones (reminiscent of the South Shore's colors, but probably coincidental), and there's a smattering of craft-store-core yard decorations about- gnomes and mushrooms and an upcycled wheelbarrow, very homey.
Digzy's sells their own bespoke regional dog, the "Digzy Dog"- mustard, onion, nacho cheese, and bacon on a 100% beef hot dog. I'm not hungry, you're hungry. It was really good! and I think the less said on how many of these I could demolish in one sitting, the better.
After food, our endeavor was to just kind of roam the town, and then ultimately hike east to reach the Central/Eastern time zone line at the county line, which afforded us plenty of time to see the small town sights.
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I am naught but a sucker for some Housing Stock, and Hudson Lake is an eclectic mix of old and new, though I only caught photos of the old. If I had to guess, I'd say the craftsman in the first photo is from the 30s-40s, and the shotgun is probably 20s-30s, based off my knowledge of similar architecture in Florida. I've seen it remarked a few times that the Midwest has more in common with the South than most Midwesterners would like to admit, and I think my second photo is a beautiful example, the overgrowth, the shotgun house, even the Buick LeSabre in the driveway, you could quite easily convince me I'd mis-shuffled a photo from my Florida or Georgia archives.
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Small and overgrown at it's edges, the lake itself made a relaxing walking partner as we ambled around. Much like the housing stock, the lake here reminded me of where I'd moved from in Florida, and brick-loving city slicker that I am, I can see why people like these places.
On our hike to the county line, E 700 N (that's the closest this road has to a name) passes under a set of heavy duty transmission lines, truly massive ones connecting the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant on the shores of Lake Michigan to a substation downstate in Lakeville. 765kv is a really staggering amount of electricity, enough you can feel and hear it buzzing as you walk underneath. This is really one of my favorite photos I've ever taken, a lovely 'multimodal' scene, picturebook america to me.
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| Oh school bus of the trees, what is your wisdom? |
Speaking of picture books, this mossy old Ford school bus was another great find and shot for me. When I was growing up, my mom picked up this book called Roadside Relics: America's Abandoned Automobiles, a beautiful 200 page softcover coffee table book of rusty American scrap iron. I credit that book- which I poured over so much that it has "Property of Keith C" written inside the cover because I carried it to school- with a lot of influence towards my love of old and rusty equipment, and the photography thereof.
We eventually reached the county line, time traveled an hour for fun, and then hiked back into town to catch a train back to the big city. While exploring Hudson Lake isn't really a day-filling activity on it's own, I'm still glad I got to visit, as it really feels like a station out of time. Little stops like these used to blanket small towns across the nation, but almost all of them have been whittled away by decades of budget cuts and service reductions. Without historic station houses or even notable concrete platforms, these stops can also disappear in the blink of an eye- the South Shore's other, less lucky flag stops have all been completely wiped from the map.
Hudson Lake may even share that same fate, as there's some murmurings in the press about building a new station to replace it on the eastern edge of New Carlisle, east of US-20 at approximately 494 E Michigan Ave. While the plans have cleared the St Joseph County Redevelopment Commission, they're conspicuously absent from the South Shore's recent expansive 20-year plan, so it's still up in the air whether it will move forward.
[1] - Credit Historic New Carlisle, via the book Images of America: Along the Chicago South Shore & South Bend Rail Line
[2] - As the railroad was known at the time; the Chicago, Lake Shore, and South Bend would be reorganized as the Chicago, South Shore, and South Bend on June 23rd, 1925.
[3] - Credit 'Hoosier Recollections' on Flickr
Find a list of my sources here
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| That's all, folks! |
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