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
So as not to be strictly a downer, I will add that some conditions have improved since the nadir of the 1960s and 70s, including overall water quality. Importantly, and perhaps ironically, some of the clearest water I encountered were the discharge streams from the various wastewater treatment plants along the river. And in areas where native wetland plants have made a comeback, the water is also noticeably (and predictably) clearer, at least during times of relative calm. Far downriver, at the Rock Run Rookery in Joliet, where it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect a soupy and opaque river, I was surprised to instead find clear water along the riverbank.
As my interest in the subject increased, I found myself improbably reading things like the annual reports of the Des Plaines River Watershed Workgroup (DRWW), a Lake County group; 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 (1-word recap: poor).
The consensus of all these reports is that, yes, there are some encouraging signs of recovery, and yes, there is greater awareness and more responsible stewardship of the river and its watershed in general. But, except maybe for Wisconsin, the Des Plaines River, and all the waterways within its watershed, remain “impaired”.
On a related note, I found an article about Des Plaines River water quality published by the Joliet Herald-News in July, 2017, reviewing the 2016 IEPA data and describing conditions between Romeoville and Joliet: “Aldrin, arsenic, chloride, methoxychlor, phosphorus, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls and fecal coliform flow in that part of the river,” it says, adding, “the IEPA considers that section of the river as one that is not supporting aquatic life, not supporting fish consumption and not supporting primary contact – or skin-in-the-water recreation.” I thought the lead paragraph of the article summed it up depressingly well: “It wouldn’t be wise to go swimming or consume fish from the Des Plaines River.”
Sadly, I think this observation still applies to the river in both Cook and Will Counties.