Mile 58.8: Northbrook/Wheeling (DPRT)
First visit: Nov. 30, 2022 Public trail? Mostly Private land? Some Distance walked: 5 miles
On a slow news day in Chicago, the headline in any one of its four daily newspapers might have read: SINATRA PLAYS THE DES PLAINES. Or, if this were a broadsheet paper, SINATRA, DAVIS & MARTIN PLAY THE DES PLAINES. No doubt snooping reporters would have been discouraged from saying much more about it, besides possibly observing the incongruous presence of Venetian gondolas on the filthy, fetid waters of the river. They certainly would not have been encouraged to report on why the Rat Pack would be playing such an unlikely venue.
It was the last week of November 1962, and the owner of a club on Milwaukee Ave. called the Villa Venice (pronounced Ven-niece, emphasis on “niece,” on account of… well, who wants to know?) named Sam Giancana, whose other job was running the Chicago mob, was allegedly looking for a return favor for allegedly helping Sinatra’s pal John Kennedy get elected. So, the famous Rat Pack trio was booked into the club for a week, and those lucky enough to get in could move around the club’s makeshift canals in its trademark gondolas. Real gondolas, brought in from Venice, which were also known to ply the turgid waters of the Des Plaines. Let that sink in (pardon the pun).
I learned a lot of interesting things about the Des Plaines River during my winter of discontent, but I’m not sure anything was as surprising as the Rat Pack and the gondolas. But it must be a generational thing, because when I shared this astonishing discovery with my brother, who is 13 years older than me, he knew all about it. And not just that, he knew the correct pronunciation – which I guess I should know to expect from a Chicagoan. And then there’s all the internet stories about it, and blogs and vlogs and even CDs for sale of the Villa Venice engagement. Still, it was news to me.
The Villa Venice has an even richer backstory than my headline summary, which you can read about here. The Hilton Chicago/Northbrook now stands at the former site of the club, and I doubt I’d even have come across this story at all if the Des Plaines River Trail (DPRT) hadn’t gotten cut off by the hotel. But because it does, I went snooping along the river’s east bank on hotel property and saw a mysterious plaque bearing this message:
This plaque has been placed here to commemorate the memory of the Venetian gondolas and their colorful singing gondoliers of yesteryear. It has also been placed here to remind so many of you of the carefree evenings made so complete by this bit of the old world so romantically portrayed here. It has been said that under the correct conditions, if you stand still on this spot long enough with your right hand over your right ear and your eyes closed, you will occasionally hear an “o sol o mi o” softly floating across the Des Plaines River. Good luck to you.
The river transforms again
This section of the DPRT, which runs from Lake-Cook Rd. to the Hilton on Milwaukee Ave., is my favorite trail section in Cook County. While not as groomed as in Lake County, the trail is still a fairly easy walk, and stays close to the river all the way from Potawatomi Woods to the Hilton. Across Dundee Rd. it runs through Dam No. 1 Woods, another source of mystery to me during my first visit because… well, because there’s no dam there, at least that I could see. I would learn that all the so-called low-head dams were removed from the river between 2011-2021 (see my Brandon Rd. Dam section), yet, possibly due to nostalgia, or familiarity, or the cost of new signs, the Forest Preserve sites bearing the names of the former dams still do. Which is confusing for a simpleton like me who expects to see dams at places that are named for them.
As the river gets closer to Lake-Cook Rd., and flows south from underneath it, it starts to assume the attributes of the urban river I grew up with. To me this begins with the big hotels that loom over the treetops, and the increasingly busy roads running alongside and over the river. The Forest Preserves themselves are nice, but Dam #1 Woods, as an example, is sandwiched between Milwaukee Ave. and I-294. In fact, the Chicago Executive Airport, formerly known as Palwaukee, sits literally across the street from where old Dam #1 used to be, and each time I’ve walked there I thought I might be strafed by a Bombardier.
As the river begins its run through Cook County, it’s already bearing one of its most distinctive characteristics: its murky greenish brown coloring. There are several factors that contribute to this, including microplankton, algae and mineral content. But these are minor factors. To get a sense for the main contributors, a short walk on the DPRT just south of Lake-Cook Rd. reveals an interesting sight: a silt bar formed at the mouth of a culvert draining the adjacent forest. I would see many more during my walks, especially in Cook County, but few as large. Or as permanent. I was able to walk out onto this silty peninsula to take some photos, and the presence of well-worn footpaths suggests others have been doing the same for a long time.
Among the criteria used to determine water quality is sediment and silt, and the Des Plaines is known for being a sediment-heavy river. The nature of rivers in general pretty much guarantees they’ll be richer in sediment than other bodies of water, but urban rivers especially tend towards muck. And the Des Plaines River, once a clear, sand and gravel-bottomed stream with high oxygen levels, may as well be the dictionary illustration for muck. There are several reasons for this, and they all come back to the impact of post-native settlement.
The unsettling effects of settlement
The presence of agriculture is the first and arguably most profound contributor, as it paved the way (almost literally) for the other contributing factors. In clearing and repurposing riverside land for farming, native wetland plants and animals were decimated, and with them the natural structure that protected the river. The ensuing erosion released – and still releases – tons of soil and other effluents into the water, including fertilizers that promote dense and sometimes toxic algae blooms, along with other pollutants. And while it is true that few farms remain along the Des Plaines River (at least in Illinois), the native wetland plants needed to fortify the riverbanks have been slow to return, a problem compounded by the ongoing erosion of the very foundation needed for them to take root.
Few farms remain along the river because they’ve been in turn pushed out by urban development, which removed still more of the native habitat while directing staggering volumes of urban effluents into the water. Countless culverts and outfalls drain roads and other impervious surfaces into the river, not to mention the contents of the combined stormwater/sewage systems prevalent in Cook County, which joins the sediments already present in the water from erosion.
This systemic degradation of the river and its watershed has been devastating to the river’s native aquatic life. Clams, snails, and gamefish could not adapt to changes in the water’s temperature, chemistry and clarity, and simply disappeared. In their place came carp, midges, billowing worms and other invaders, which are not only better suited to the siltier, oxygen-poor environment, but cause further damage by foraging and stripping the river bottom. And because they’re in the river, they’ve also gotten into the many lakes that border it throughout Illinois. In 2022, Lake County removed 11,721 carp from 8 lakes, totaling 57,433 lbs. Doing so will reportedly remove 161-351 lbs. of phosphorous per year.
All of these conditions, along with the river’s increased tendency to flood (more about this in my River Grove section), make this a harsh and inhospitable environment for many kinds of trees, which would otherwise be another natural reinforcement against erosion. Instead, the river and its watershed are plagued by dying, dead and toppled trees, many of which end up in the water and contribute to the already dense sediment. The further south in my river wanderings, the more I saw fallen trees, which clogged the river and its spillways and blocked trails. More than a few times I found myself warily eyeing the overstory as leaning trees rattled and creaked in the wind.
And everything I’ve said here about the river is true of all of the tributaries that feed it as well, so that all of their effluents join the Des Plaines and further compound the situation.
Love that dirty water
One of the most frequent questions I am asked, whether during my “work” as a hike leader for the Friends of the Forest Preserves, or in conversations and correspondence resulting from this fan site, is about the water quality of the Des Plaines River. Many can remember seeing or hearing about raw sewage on the river, as well as industrial pollution, illegal dumping, toxic algae blooms, etc. Much of that is ancient history now, but reputations die hard. Similarly, to the extent anyone even looks at the river, as they pass over it on a bridge or absently gaze out the windows while in line at Gene and Jude’s, its dark muddy olive-green complexion may lend it a slightly suspicious or menacing appearance. Is that normal? Is the water safe?
I’m rarely satisfied myself with answers that start with, “It depends,” but all throughout this website that’s pretty much what I’m doing. Elsewhere I go into didactic, parenthetical asides about wastewater, stormwater, combined sewer output and erosion, but also about aquatic species, plants and wildlife as well. Each of those conversations addresses some aspect of the river’s water quality. They also add up to “It depends”. I’d say the water quality today is dramatically better than it was in 2000, and in 2000 it was dramatically better than it had been in the 1960s, and I’m not going out on a limb in saying it.
The most important gauge of the river’s cleanup, in my opinion, is the return of mussels, clams and gamefish, which all but vanished during the latter half of the 20th century. But would I eat one of those gamefish? I probably wouldn’t, but I’ve met many people who do. And it might also depend on where I’m fishing: I’d be much more inclined to eat a fish caught in Kenosha County versus Cook County. Would I drink water from the river? Not directly, but I would be fine using something like my Life Filter water bottle, though preferably not after a major storm. By the same token, though, I have no problem drinking water straight from the public hand pumps found in Cook County Forest Preserves all up and down the river.
People swim in the Des Plaines River, and for that matter in the Chicago River too. I’ve seen them, and though nobody’s skin was melting off, that doesn’t mean it’s advisable. It’s also a popular river for canoes and kayaks, especially farther north and south. I’ve never tried the river this way, but it seems at least possible to paddle the entirety of the river, with a brief portage at the Brandon Road Dam in Joliet. Whether anyone should do that, or would even want to, especially between Lyons and Joliet, is a different matter. But would all these people be swimming or kayaking in the river if it were toxic sludge, as it was just fifty years ago?
Taken together, the anecdotal evidence supports my view that the water quality has generally improved, and in some kind of crazy cosmic alignment, the scientific evidence does too. But there’s of course a “but”, first because any improvement is obviously relative, and second because there are so many variables to consider, starting with weather and location. The pristine ground water flowing past the Great Lakes Dragaway in Wisconsin is unrecognizable by the time it merges with the San Ship Canal 108 miles downstream in Lockport. Likewise, any time a storm causes combined sewer outfall (CSO) in Cook County, the anglers 65 miles south in Channahon might more reasonably opt to spend the day at the Big Basin Saloon rather than on the water.
One of the ironies, or paradoxes, of directing virtually all of the metro area’s wastewater into the Des Plaines River is that the water is in fact pretty clean. State EPA guidelines for wastewater processing require the chlorination of treated water before it enters its “receiving stream”, which is ultimately the Des Plaines River for most of the Chicago metro area. I’ve taken tours of MWRD processing facilities and hiked over and alongside discharge streams, from Zion to Channahon, and from a visual perspective the water is literally crystal clear. I’ve also encountered what appear to be discharge streams from other, non-public entities, and they are just as clear, which makes sense: everyone should play by the same rules.
This is an important consideration, because on most days there’s more wastewater in the river than naturally occurring water. What that ratio is has eluded me, but for context, I’d read that during droughts, the water on the North Branch of the Chicago River can be as much as 75% wastewater, and only a relative smattering of treatment facilities discharge into the North Branch. In contrast, there are at least 21 water reclamation facilities that I could identify on the Des Plaines River, releasing roughly 2.5 billion gallons of treated water daily into the river. The ratio of that water to naturally occurring water may be fluid (ha!), but it would seem to be wastewater dominant. And though the chlorine isn’t good for the aquatic life on the river, I’m of the mind that it’s better than raw sewage.
Of all the nasty things that could be in the Des Plaines River, from insecticides to petroleum products to heavy metals, some of the most threatening are the ones I could find the least about: the microbe-sized stuff that can make us sick and kill us; the germs, bacteria, viruses and other microscopic threats that, unlike sewage, aren’t visible to us.
Any body of water has these – heck, bodies in general, like our own, are swarming with them – and though rivers would seem to be good at flushing stuff out, what they’re really good at is moving stuff downriver. Hikers in the north know to beware of bacteria from moose feces in open water, a seemingly bigger threat in the closed system of a lake than in a flowing river, but a river in this case is kind of a superspreader. That’s in fact the reason they had to reverse the flow of the Chicago River: to carry typhoid and other water-borne diseases away from the city and its drinking water and way out west to the Mississippi River, where they could be someone else’s problem. (There’s a reason St. Louis doesn’t like Chicago, and it predates the Cubs/Cardinals.) In congested urban areas, and especially on rivers that receive wastewater, the volume and variety of microbial threats increases, which in turn threatens everyone downriver.
As my interest in the subject increased, I found myself improbably reading things like the annual reports of the Lake County-based Des Plaines River Watershed Workgroup (DRWW); a 2001 IDNR-sponsored report titled The Upper Des Plaines River Basin: An Inventory of the Region’s Resources; a 2003 IEPA report titled Lower Des Plaines River Use Attainability Analysis; a 2007 report by some of the same authors entitled A River is Reborn: Use Attainability Analysis for the Lower Des Plaines River; and a 2016 IEPA report that examined the river’s water quality in Will County. I’ll spare you all that reading with a 1-word recap of their opinion of the water quality: poor.
The DRWW cuts right to the chase at its website, as follows: “Lakes and streams within the Des Plaines River watershed have been identified by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (Illinois EPA) as impaired for phosphorus, fecal coliform, chloride and other pollutants. These rivers and streams do not meet Illinois EPA’s designated uses of aquatic life, primary contact recreation, and fish consumption.” And that’s up in Lake County, where the river has yet to encounter the harsher environments of Cook and Will Counties.