Our second stop will take place in the city of La Porte, Indiana. This is a beautiful area that is home to Soldiers memorial Park, a park with a lake, beaches, and plenty of lovely scenery. La Porte is a perfect place to stop, catch your breath, and feast your eyes on beauty all around, especially the trees. La Porte is known as the “Maple City”, because of the planting of maple trees along its main thoroughfares in the 1850s.
The town of La Porte was originally known for building farm machinery, an industry that existed there for over a century. In the 1840s, La Porte’s reputation began to change. It was the home of the La Porte Medical School, considered to be the first of its time in the Midwest. One of its graduates was William Mayo, who in 1889 went on to establish the famed Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
