Hessville residents and environmental groups are concerned about a bridge project that wlll cut through Briar East Woods, destroying 4,000-year-old Tolleston Ridge sand dunes near 169th and Parrish Avenue. Ken Rosek, of Hammond, who is spearheading efforts to save the 32-acre site, stands near a pond located in the woods of the site. Staff photo by John Luke
Hessville residents and environmental groups are concerned about a bridge project that wlll cut through Briar East Woods, destroying 4,000-year-old Tolleston Ridge sand dunes near 169th and Parrish Avenue. Ken Rosek, of Hammond, who is spearheading efforts to save the 32-acre site, stands near a pond located in the woods of the site. Staff photo by John Luke
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HAMMOND — Hessville native Ken Rosek grew up wandering the Briar East Woods.

Also sometimes known as the Parrish Woods and Grand Woods, the forest is a patch of leafy green nature in Northwest Indiana's largest city. It's home to trees, shrubs, thickets, a lake, reed-ringed wetlands and ancient sand dunes where kids go sledding in the winter. Unlike icier neighborhood sledding spots, it has a switchback goat path that made it easy to clamber back up with one's sled for another trip down during Rosek's childhood.

One pathway down the dune is so well-worn Rosek compared it to "a perfect bobsled run like in the Olympics." If sledders built up enough momentum going down, they could take a makeshift ramp to try to soar over a massive tree stump.

Rosek fondly recalls spending countless hours in the Briar East Woods, remembering them nostalgically as "one of the greatest influences in my childhood that guided my life with a worldly sense of curiosity and wonder." He played ice hockey on the frozen Briar East Lake in the winter, pretending to be Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita or Tony Esposito. In the spring, he looked for bullfrogs when the woods became swampy and floated in the shallow water in a repurposed oil tank raft in a "genuine Tom Sawyer experience happening in our own backyard."

But now a construction project threatens the Briar East Woods, located near the "College Bound" water tower at Parrish Avenue and 169th Street in Hammond's Hessville neighborhood. Hammond secured Indiana Department of Transportation funding to build a flyover bridge that would lift traffic over the railroad tracks, where cars are frequently stopped by freight trains waiting to pass through the congested tracks in Chicago. The $11 million project would close the at-grade crossings at Parish Avenue and Arizona Avenue.

It would cut diagonally into an estimated 8-18 acres of the 32-acre Briar East Woods, requiring that trees be clear-cut and bulldozed. The Department of the Interior declared it to be "partially a remnant of the native sand dune and wetland swale ecosystem that existed in this portion of Hammond before the city's founding and partially regrowth of lands disturbed by the development of neighboring properties." It's home to black oaks, red oaks, maple trees, wafer ash, bracken fern, buckthorn and garlic mustard, woodland sunflowers, spiderwort and Siberian elms.

The Briar East Woods is crisscrossed with ATV trails and used by some as a dumpsite. It's littered with beer cans, wrappers, tires, a rusted-out grill and the rotted skeleton of a driveway basketball hoop. But it remains a pocket of largely unadulterated nature in the city of Hammond.

Sand dunes in the woods reach 50 feet to 75 feet high, creating the highest natural point in Hammond. The rolling terrain is hilly, with trails leading up and down inclines under the shade of thick tree canopies. Bushy-tailed squirrels dash and bound around. Rosek has seen herons in the woods and a red-tailed hawk's nest in the sylvan setting.

The book "Shifting Sands" identifies the sand ridges running through Hammond's Hessville neighborhood as part of the 4,000-year-old High Tolleston Dunes that ran between Calumet City and Portage, creating a rare beach ridge and swale ecosystem from when Lake Michigan extended further inland. The ecosystem is preserved in the nearby Gibson Woods, where the father of ecology Henry Chandler Cowles once studied the flora and fauna with his students from the University of Chicago.

Rosek and the Hessville Dune Dusters group, which has more than 200 members on Facebook and does periodic cleanups of the woods, hope to preserve the land. Local environmental groups also have called for preservation.

"The parcel would be useful to local Hammond residents as protected open space," Izaak Walton League of America Director Jim Sweeney wrote in a letter to Hammond city officials. "It could be used for recreation, wildlife habitats, and water retention and water quality, a greenspace city park. Protected green space is always a good investment for the local community. Open land and green space have proven benefits that include better learning environments for students and a de-stressor for residents that enjoy wildlife or a walk in the woods. Often it improves the real estate value of neighboring properties."

The Briar East Woods are too degraded to serve as a nature preserve, but preserving the woods as a park would buffer urban noise, absorb air pollution and provide other benefits, Sweeney wrote.

"The parcel has sand ridges and several small wetlands and a variety of trees of different species and sizes. It is a good wildlife habitat," he wrote. "It is possible that Lake County Parks and Recreation would be willing to help the city manage the property for its natural values and recreational potential because of its proximity to Gibson Woods County Park."

Hammond owns much of the land, which it never turned into a park. Purdue University Northwest possesses a portion of the Briar Woods East where it had at one point planned to build athletic fields.

Purdue Northwest long had a "future park site" sign posted outside the Briar East Woods that recently disappeared.

In 2018, Hammond sought state funding from a gas tax hike from a pool of money meant to fund railroad grade separation projects throughout the state. The idea was if drivers were frequently getting stuck behind trains, local communities could dig tunnels under or, usually, build bridges over the tracks.

"It's been a perennial problem in Hessville," Hammond City Engineer Dean Button said. "The mayor made quite a row about a Norfolk Southern train that was stopped in Hessville for days."

So Hammond designed a new bridge to be called Governor's Parkway in honor of the state funding and the nearby Morton High School Governors. It will span about 0.6 miles from 169th and Parrish by the water tank in Hessville through the wooded area to 173rd Street east of Parrish.

Hammond is looking at that route instead of building a bridge over the existing roadway on Parrish Avenue so the bridge walls would not disrupt the homes along the street, Button said.

"Vertically facing walls would echo, exacerbating the noise from trains and traffic," he said. "A lot of property would be affected."

The state funding also requires Hammond to close two street crossings to address the stoppages. People would still be able to drive right up to the tracks but Parish Avenue and Arizona Avenue would be turned into residential cul-de-sacs.

"One of the conditions is to close two existing crossings, at Parrish and Arizona," he said. "We felt that realignment was certainly cheaper and would make it easier to travel through that area."

Over the last decade, Norfolk Southern has often stopped trains there for hours as they wait to enter Chicago. It's an inconvenience for drivers that also raises public safety concerns, Button said.

"Motorists get angry," he said. "Public safety vehicles can't get through. They have a long way to get around. There are some real concerns with students trying to get to and from Scott Middle School and Hessville Elementary School crawling through the trains. That's dangerous."

The state is paying about $7 million, Hammond $3.5 million and the railroad company the remainder of the $11 million project, Button said.

"There was a fatality nearby in the neighborhood where a driver made the poor decision of trying to get around the crossing," Button said. "There's a high number of potential crashes with all the trains in the area. That was the primary reason, but the state also agreed to provide funding because of the economic development component. As you may be aware, Hammond has a fair shortage of land available for development and this could open more up to houses in the future and a small amount of commercial development."

Hammond estimates as many as 50 new homes could be built across from the newer Parrish View subdivision, as well as two lots for commercial businesses. But that would come later and be driven by private sector developers, Button said.

Construction on the bridge would start in July of 2023 and continue through 2024, Button said.

Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott said the Parrish Avenue Bridge Project would improve the quality of life and safety in the neighborhoods.

"Hessville residents, and there are about 30,000 of them, are tired of getting stuck behind trains," he said. "There's a problem and we're doing something to fix it."

Rosek hopes to persuade the city to consider its plans. The Hessville Dune Dusters hope to turn out opponents at upcoming meetings, such as a redevelopment commission meeting on Nov. 1 and a Mayor's Night Out in Hessville originally on Nov. 3, now rescheduled to Dec. 8.

"I'm just obsessively shocked they would pick this route," he said. "The area is so urban. It's surrounded by expressways."

He long lived in Chicago and moved back to Hessville to take care of his ailing mother, who has since died.

"Everybody was waiting for the future park," he said. "This is the last leg in the area of the Tolleston Dunes along the lakeshore. The whole area was sand mined before Hessville became part of Hammond. But these dunes still remained."

He now walks his dog there, is concerned about increased flooding in the neighborhood if it weren't there to absorb runoff and would like to see it preserved for future generations so they could enjoy the experiences he had as a kid.

"My friends and I spent days and days there in the woods," he said. "We ice skated, sledded and shot BB guns out there. We spent a lot of time there."

He sees the Briar East Woods as the heart of Hessville.

"There were shortcuts, hangouts, and campsites. It was a place to explore and be a kid away from parental interference," he said. "These woods were also a place of refuge. A place to escape from bickering parents, drunken fathers, abusive uncles, or some other drama that made some homes an unpleasant environment to be. It was a few blocks away and always there and it gave us a valuable sanctuary from that when really needed."

McDermott remains unconvinced. He said Hammond has to go forward with the project or risk losing out on $7 million in hard-to-produce state infrastructure funding.

McDermott also said he believes a majority of Hessville residents want to see a bridge that would lift traffic over stalled trains.

"You can't do anything without some opposition, which unfortunately there is in this case," he said.

Rosek believes the Briar East Woods could have transformative potential if preserved as a park and kept up better.

"I was one of the pioneers of the Humboldt Park area. Jens Jensen, who really helped save and preserve the dunes, designed and built the park," he said. "I saw what the park did for that neighborhood. The only city parks we have in Hessville have ballfields that haven't been seriously used in 30 years and flat open space. It's all flat open space when we have woods, dunes, swamps, a lake, a lot of nature right here."

The dunes date back long before Hammond was ever founded, Rosek said. But once they're gone, they're gone.

"These dunes were preserved when most of the sand mining was stopped by conservationists in the early 1900s. They were the tallest of all the dunes, some towering up to 125 feet," he said. "Hammond's dunes were all leveled. It is speculated that ours in Hessville were saved because Hessville was not yet a part of Hammond at the time. How horribly ironic that it will be the City of Hammond who will put an end to them now."
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