If you ever watched and enjoyed the Hollywood musical The Music Man—in which the song “Gary, Indiana” paints a picture of idyllic homespun Americana—you’ll be surprised by the reality of the place. In contrast to the rural rest of the state, this far northwest corner of Indiana is among the most heavily industrialized and impoverished areas of the country. In and around Gary (pop. 106,000), massive petrochemical refineries and factories (including a huge U.S. Steel mill) are surrounded by decaying communities, and the streets are lined by strip malls, strip clubs, stripped-down cars—and signs directing you toward the big new waterfront casinos. During the region’s heyday around the turn of the 20th century, the mills, foundries, and factories along the Calumet River pumped out millions of dollars’ worth of products every day. The town’s more recent products include musical family The Jackson 5, born and bred here in the 1950s, but nowadays economic times are so hard that local authorities have had to call in the National Guard to police the streets.
