Miles 122-130: Six Forest Preserves
First visit: Dec. 6, 2022 Public trail? Not always Private land? Maybe Distance walked: 4 miles
While trying to see the Des Plaines River from everywhere it is accessible by foot, I walked a number of places that were unique and special but were either so short that they would barely register on my mile-by-mile travelogue, or they were parallel to a trail across the river that I walked and documented separately. My rule was to record distances walked along the river only once.
An example of this would be the beautiful Edward L. Ryerson Conservation Area in Lake County. The thing is, I’d already logged the roughly 1.5 miles of the Des Plaines River Trail (DPRT) that I’d walked on the opposite bank of the river, so Ryerson didn’t count towards my distance walked. But I couldn’t not walk the trails at Ryerson just because I’d already walked the same distance across the way, because then I would have missed one of the most amazing preserves on the Des Plaines River.
I encountered similar scenarios along other parts of the river, but there are so many in Will County that I want to gather them in one place and highlight each individually. As I’ve done throughout this Des Plaines River fan site, I’m going to address them going north to south, as the river flows.
Isle a la Cache
Speaking of the Ryerson Conservation Area, that’s one of two nature centers that really stand out for me in terms of preservation, restoration and exhibition. The other one is Isle a la Cache in Romeoville. From my perspective, they’re as different as they are alike. What’s different starts with their origin stories: Ryerson was preserved in its mostly natural state by wealthy weekenders from Chicago, while Isle a la Cache was restored after Romeoville was first settled there; Ryerson was gifted to the Lake County Forest Preserves, while the Will County Forest Preserves had to buy Isle a la Cache; Ryerson is up north, in the wide-ranging Des Plaines River watershed, while Isle a la Cache is down south, in the heart of the Des Plaines River Valley. But they also have some important characteristics in common: both have arcadian settings and beautiful hiking paths; both have public learning centers and natural history exhibits; both are located near major public trails; and both are a kind of natural oasis amidst runaway urban development.
While there are islands in the river up north, none are very big, and some may be little more than overgrown silt deposits. Like a lot of things having to do with the Des Plaines, the islands are different down here. Isle a la Cache is situated on both sides of Romeo Rd., a few hundred yards away from the San Ship and I&M Canals, and next to the Fish Dispersal Barrier operation. It is the first in a string of large islands that run south all the way to the river’s confluence with the Illinois, and sits parallel to the end of the Centennial Trail and the resumption of the I&M Trail. I first visited this island in the winter and was able to walk virtually all of its southern half, very much off trail. This south part of the island includes the nature center and a recreated Potawatomi camp, and some of the most beautiful views of the river anywhere, even with the unavoidable smokestacks and train whistles in the near background.
The Potawatomi exhibit is the most elaborate of its kind on the Des Plaines and encourages visitors to imagine a summer camp on the river where the tribe built reserves of fish, game and crops. It includes a museum, an outdoor theatre and a recreated longhouse, filled with native tools, handiworks and pelts. During the summer the museum hosts presentations about its native wildlife, including turtles, crayfish and beavers.
While I walked the south half of the island in both winter and summer (I stayed on its short trail in the summer), I did not attempt to walk the wilder north half of the island at all, mainly because it isn’t set up for public access. Instead, I walked the nearby Centennial Trail, and was able to view the north part of the island by going off trail in the winter and following a pipeline clearing.
Isle a la Cache is where present-day Romeoville was first established, though the County acquired the 107-acre preserve between 1982-2014. Its name may derive from the island reportedly being used as a stashing site by the Voyageurs, French fur trappers and traders who were active from here to Hudson Bay and were among the earliest Europeans in the area. The early French influence is permanently preserved in place names, if nothing else, from Joliet to Isle a la Cache to Des Plaines itself.
Lockport Prairie Preserve
A little south of Isla a la Cache, at Hwy. 53 and W. 9th St. in Lockport, is the start of what is arguably the most prototypical Illinois Forest Preserve, at least on the Des Plaines River. Once a quarry and foundry site and left in ruins after being stripped essentially bare, this same story could apply to almost any preserve, starting with Van Patten Woods in Wadsworth, as well as most of the lakes bordering the river. The 320-acre site was acquired by Will County from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) in 2011 and 2015, and is part of the larger Des Plaines River preservation system, which conserves over 2,400 acres. In terms of habitat restoration, it still feels very much like a work-in-progress, and its limited public access reflects the delicate nature of the mission. Preserve signage isn’t visible from either road; and Division St., which crosses Hwy. 53 and bisects the site, comes to a dead-end here.
Though it looks especially forlorn and desolate in the winter, it’s a popular spot for ducks, geese, cranes and egrets, and is a living laboratory in prairie rebirth. Per the Forest Preserve website, it protects “a diversity of habitats, including forest, prairie, savanna, wetland, and a portion of the Des Plaines River”. It’s also home to several federally endangered species, including the Hine’s emerald dragonfly and the lakeside daisy.
Seeing as my intent was to walk the river, I looked for ways to do that here that would be longer and more satisfactory, to me at least, than the short half-mile trail carved into the prairie here. The old Division St. bridge served as a good starting point during all of my visits, especially after vandals removed the grated barriers meant to prevent bridge access. From the bridge I was able to walk north near the river all the way up to 9th St., though it was not easy going, even in the frozen dead of winter. I was also able to hike quite a ways south along the river, despite the absence of a trail, and almost made it as far as the Lockport Power House before deep streams and thick wetland growth proved impassable. There is a short southbound footpath on the west riverbank that starts at the bridge and passes through a limestone debris field that was surprisingly busy with bugs and birds at the end of February – either a sign of early spring or climate change.
I visited this area several times after someone removed the grate barrier on the bridge, and even walked up to Powerhouse Rd., which I know is closed to the public. It would have made the walk to the Powerhouse so much easier than my improvised trail through the preserve but would also have instantly exposed me to security. The bridge, also off-limits but marginally less risky, offers some great views of the river and the surrounding prairie, and I would like to add that I was never the only person trespassing. Which doesn’t make it right but shows how popular this spot is.
Rock Run Rookery
This is possibly my favorite preserve to visit in warm weather, because it’s just what its name says it is: a rookery. And a quite active one, at that. A large rock rises out of a filled-in quarry that was swarming with white cranes during a visit I made in June, while across the way a crowd of black cormorants kept what looked like a wary watch on them, as if the two were rival gangs. Meanwhile the flooded quarry lake was filled with canoes and kayaks and ringed with anglers. I watched one guy wrestle a 2-1/2 lb. smallmouth bass to shore, and a woman in a canoe catch several smaller fish.
There is a short but very nice trail on the east edge of the quarry with a boardwalk that runs parallel to the Des Plaines, though the dense vegetation makes it difficult to see it. I first came here in January with the idea of going off trail to see the river, and while I could indeed get to the water, it was very boggy even when mostly frozen, and I couldn’t make it very far along the riverbank. I saw a toppled oak tree, and in its exposed root ball was a round and smooth piece of limestone that must have been enveloped by roots and submerged in the Des Plaines River for centuries. It has since been liberated.
I wanted to include a section in this fan site devoted to the many enthusiastic birders I encountered during my walks. I was going to call it Boobies and Tits, with the caveat that boobies are only found in the Pacific Ocean, and most species of tits are confined to the British Isles. Still, I thought such a title might improve my search engine results. Alas, when I hatched that plan (ha!) I thought I’d be able to persuade birders to share their photos with me for display at this website, but that has so far proven fruitless. I’m not smart enough to identify many of the birds I see, nor is my iPhone camera very good at getting their picture. But I do ask people to tell me some of the more surprising or rare species they encounter, and people have mentioned the yellow-bellied sapsucker, the cape may, the gold finch, and several types of orioles.
If you’re a bird watcher along the Des Plaines River and feel like sharing some of your pictures, I’d like to post some here. With full credit to you, of course. Please e-mail me at dan.witte@thedesplaines.com.
Briscoe Mounds
This archaeological treasure represents the closest native burial grounds to present-day Chicago, though visitors will have a hard time seeing them, and are of course prohibited from disturbing them. I came across this site by accident as I was looking for other views of the DuPage River’s confluence with the Des Plaines and admit to being surprised that such a site exists so close to the city. And on the Des Plaines River, no less. I’ve already covered Isle a la Cache, which features an impressive recreation of a Potawatomi summer camp. Briscoe Mounds isn’t a recreation, and the site is said to date to the 1200s, which would predate the Potawatomi.
This isn’t a good area for hiking, and it’s debatable if I covered even 500 feet of riverfront here, which is why it ended up in this section of my travelogue (I also mentioned it in my Channahon section). But this area is popular for fishing and hunting, and there are blinds set up all along the river shore here, which can’t be found anywhere else on the Des Plaines.
There is also a small but informative kiosk on site that explains the mounds, and the indigenous village that researchers say existed there in the 13th century. There is precious little in the Chicago area that can be said to remain intact from so long ago, and even this site hasn’t been left completely unmolested, but it’s the oldest and most significant archaeological landmark I know of in Chicagoland – though I can hear the citizens of Channahon insisting they’re not part of the Chicago metro area.
McKinley Woods and Four Rivers
McKinley Woods is an amazing Will County Forest Preserve, divided geographically (if not logically, to my disordered mind) into Kerry Sheridan Grove and Frederick’s Grove, which are connected for hikers via a 2-mile stretch of the I&M Canal Trail. Kerry Sheridan Grove and the Four Rivers Nature Center are either the same place, or they are next-door neighbors; I’m not entirely clear on the distinctions, even after having them explained to me by some patient Forest Preserve folks. Nonetheless, the whole of McKinley Woods is a beautiful preserve, both calming and energizing, and a natural magnet to wildlife and outdoors types.
I will start with Kerry Sheridan Grove, which sits at the confluence of the Du Page and Des Plaines Rivers, on a piece of land that was once a private island called Moose Island (many maps, including Google Maps, still label it Moose Island). This is home to the Four Rivers Nature Center, the other two rivers being the nearby Kankakee River, and the Illinois. The first time I visited I stood in gape-mouthed awe by a tank featuring walleye and crappie, two gamefish that I travel all the way to the Canadian border to fish for, and that I didn’t know were in the Des Plaines.
The nature center’s exhibits explore the role of glaciers in forming midwestern waterways, how a watershed works, and the return of native aquatic species, with an emphasis on the humble mussel and what its presence means to the health of the rivers here. The facility also has some amazing common space, including a rentable reception hall with panoramic views of the Des Plaines River, which at this point is a wide and busy waterway.
Around the nature center are some looping, all-access trails from which visitors can see the so-called Big Basin, the widest expanse anywhere on the Des Plaines, as well as the Du Page River confluence. Walking distance on these looping trails totals less than two miles, and since some of them are technically parallel to the I&M Canal Trail, I can only claim about a half-mile of river distance here. These trails in fact connect to the I&M Canal Trail here, via a canoe launch and picnic area with views of the Du Page River confluence, a popular fishing spot in warmer weather. This is my preferred start point for a hike along the I&M Trail to the Illinois River, a 7-mile roundtrip that is my favorite Des Plaines River hike of all.
Walking this section of trail will take you to the Frederick’s Grove portion of McKinley Woods, situated on bluffs that overlook the river’s U-bend in Channahon. In terms of revelations, this preserve was the most eye-opening for me. That may be because my first visit was in the winter, when I had to park in the upper parking lot and walk down a closed road to the river. I had some idea that the river had grown wider and deeper down here, as I’d already seen it from area trails and bridges at that point. But descending through the bare woods and seeing glimpses of the river as it gradually revealed itself was quite an experience for me. I recommend that everyone in Cook and Lake Counties come here to see the Des Plaines River. In summer, when the IDNR camp is open and the docks and marinas are busy, it very much has a vacation feel to it.
As the trail name suggests, you’re hiking along the I&M Canal here, which runs parallel to the Des Plaines only a few yards away. Trail signs highlight the canal’s history (as they do all along this trail, including the parts I walked in the Joliet area), and though the canal is no longer commercially active, it does receive enough treated wastewater to help keep it filled and attractive to a wide array of wildlife and wetlands plants. Further west, past Frederick’s Grove and nearer the Illinois River, the canal becomes stagnant and hosts some pungent algae blooms, but the Des Plaines River is at its most robust here, especially where it merges with the Kankakee to form the Illinois River. I write about walking to this confluence elsewhere on this fan site (click here), but wish to add that Frederick’s Grove is the closest and best trailhead access if you wish to walk to the confluence, and beyond to the Dresden Dam on the Illinois.
Taken together, the two McKinley Woods preserves and the nature center make this one of the top places to visit on the Des Plaines River. I find myself irresistibly drawn here, a roughly one-hour drive from my home on an early weekend morning in agreeable weather. I’ve been here in the winter, spring, and summer, and am eager to see its fall colors this year.