Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States, 25 miles from downtown Chicago, Illinois. Gary is adjacent to the Indiana Dunes National Park and borders southern Lake Michigan in the Chicago metropolitan area. Gary was named after lawyer Elbert Henry Gary, who was the founding chairman of the United States Steel Corporation. Although initially a very diverse city, after white flight in the 1970s, the city of Gary held the nation’s highest percentage of African Americans for several decades. The city is known for its large steel mills and as the birthplace of the Jackson family.
The population of Gary was 69,093, as of the 2020 Census. Once a prosperous steel town, it has suffered drastic population loss due to overseas competition and restructuring of the industry, falling by 61 percent from its peak of 178,320 in 1960. As with many Rust Belt cities, it suffers from above average unemployment and decaying infrastructure. Due to the rapid population decrease over the past half-century, it is estimated that nearly one-third of all houses in the city are unoccupied or abandoned.