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Home > Explore the Area > Regions & Communities > Portage

Portage

Lakeside city with a nautical touch

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It’s the largest city in Indiana Dunes Country, and, like the other communities, Portage is extremely outdoors-friendly, with trails and a slew of parks and recreational facilities. The parks scattered throughout the city feature everything from a mountain biking trail to a skate park.

And, of course, Portage is home to unique special events like the Elvis FANtasy Fest and Portage Perch Fest & Grand Prix. It’s also got one of the only totally public marinas, where visitors and residents can both launch out onto Lake Michigan and dock their boats in the public slips. You can also rent a boat at CMS Marine and pilot it out onto Lake Michigan, or you can relax and hire a charter boat to take you out fishing or sightseeing.

Instead of one centralized downtown area, Portage is comprised of different pockets of business, recreation and entertainment. Looking for family fun? Enjoy a movie at Portage 16 IMAX (one of the state’s few IMAX movie theaters), visit the Bass Pro Shops sportsman superstore or head into one of the nation’s largest, most ecologically diverse national parks -- the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. The Lakeshore has great sites in Portage like West Beach (voted one of the Top 10 Family Beaches in the nation) and Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk (a park that sits side-by-side with industry, but seems a world apart from it).

From its humble beginnings as a place where pioneers and Native Americans lived side by side, to about 40 years ago when a trinity of towns united to become one, Portage has always been a place where people of diverse backgrounds still come to work, live and play in the shadow of a beautiful natural treasure.

Do it in Portage

  • Experience a great expanse of nature at sites like West Beach, Tolleston Dunes and Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk
  • Sit back, relax and then get blown away at Portage 16 IMAX -- the only place in Northern Indiana offering the coolness of IMAX on an eight-story screen
  • Recharge and have fun at Quaker Steak & Lube, a restaurant with a real working NASCAR, three corvettes and eight motorcycles hanging from the ceiling -- or enjoy other great restaurants, like Cappo’s, Fuji Japanese Restaurant, Kelsey’s Steakhouse and Topperz
  • Shop in an outdoorsman’s paradise -- Bass Pro Shops -- and be sure to enjoy a seafood dish at the in-store Islamorada Fish Company restaurant
  • Get all shook up at Elvis FANtasy Fest each October
  • Get onto Lake Michigan and see the Indiana Dunes from a unique vantage point

To learn more visit Ci.Portage.In.US or PortageInChamber.com