Mile 0: Racine County, Wisconsin
First visit: Dec. 11, 2022 Public trail? No Private land? Unsure, unposted Distance walked: 1 mile
Like many bodies of water in North America, the Des Plaines River, along with its network of tributaries, wetlands and spillways, was created by melting and retreating glaciers some 14,000 years ago. These glaciers, in fact, are largely responsible for the geographic and geologic makeup of much of northern Illinois and Wisconsin, where the Des Plaines River originates and continues to flow today.
At its source, the Des Plaines River “rises” in southern Wisconsin, in a place called Union Grove, just west of Kenosha. That’s how the river’s origins are described in many reference materials, and for some readers of a certain generation, such a description may evoke the theme song of The Beverly Hillbillies, where “up from the ground come a bubbling crude.”
It may in fact have been exactly like that at one time, groundwater percolating up and following the land as it begins heading south. But that’s not the way it looks today. Most maps show the river starting as a y-shaped fork in farmland just north of the Great Lakes Dragaway, and while it is indeed possible to observe a shallow y-shaped gulley amidst the dense brush there, you’d first have to walk the length of what is basically a farm ditch, then climb down into densely overgrown marsh in order to discern it among the vegetation. No normal person would do this. But if you did do this, you would indeed see the source and headwater of the Des Plaines River, flowing from pipes that jut forth from underneath some neighboring farm fields to form something like a small slough, which quickly assumes the contours of a shallow streambed heading south.
What is the river’s actual source?
Where I grew up, in River Grove, there were several Forest Preserves with public hand pumps where anybody could help themselves to what my friends and family called “well water” – said with some disdain, because we had modern fluoridated tap water at home. To the extent I ever thought about them, which wasn’t much, it may have occurred to me that all the Forest Preserves with hand pumps bordered the river. It’s even quite possible that in my juvenile ignorance I might have assumed “well water” equated with “river water”. It seems the years haven’t made me much wiser, because I still equate the two, albeit in a slightly different sense than my younger self.
I do think all that well water is river water, in that it’s being pumped up from the same aquifer whose springs feed the river, both directly from the river bottom and indirectly from the various ponds and lakes that feed the river. I’ve seen these on my walks, springs bubbling up from the riverbed itself, and from nearby ponds and lakes that flow into the river. These springs are fed by aquifers, often described as underground rivers, issuing a steady stream of fresh water the way a volcano issues lava, and this is precisely what one sees both at the source of the Des Plaines and at the various public wells along the river’s course. The source of the Des Plaines then is the same groundwater supplying the popular handpumps.
This groundwater is likely all from the same aquifer, or aquifers, as there are two or three in the area to choose from. The deepest is the Cambrian Aquifer, a sandstone and dolomite aquifer that feeds most of the groundwater in Wisconsin and northern Illinois. There is also an eastern dolomite aquifer, called the Silurian or Niagran Aquifer, which effectively lays above the Cambrian around Union Grove, while at the top of the groundwater chain are numerous sand and gravel aquifers that cover virtually all Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Any or all of these, bubbling up to the surface, are the river’s source, while similarly sourced creeks and rivers downstream feed the river all the way to its confluence with the Illinois River, 133 miles away in Channahon.
I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, and remember the Des Plaines River having a pungent, earthy, sewer-like smell, which I’ve often attributed to pollution. For sure, the river has been treated like a sewer since Europeans colonized and settled the surrounding areas, establishing farmland and industry along its banks and steering its effluents into the water. Pollution levels peaked during my childhood, and while much of this has thankfully been reduced, there was, and still is, a certain amount of storm drainage and other pollutants that spill into the Des Plaines, especially as it makes its way through Cook County and points south. This can carry literal sewage and industrial waste into the river even today, owing to the area’s compromised drainage and its ancient stormwater/sewage system, and there are times during my hikes along the river that I detect the unmistakable smell of petroleum and natural gas, along with other noxious odors.
But something occurred to me when I visited the river’s source: it smelled familiar. It smelled, to me, like the Des Plaines River. At that point the water is about as pure as water can get, long before it suffers the downstream indignities of urbanization. Because of this, I assume that the source of the river’s smell is the same as the distinctive smell and taste of the well water in the Illinois Forest Preserves, and has something to do with the mineral and chemical makeup of the groundwater that feeds the river. Not discounting the effects of the pollution that plagued the Des Plaines River for years, but maybe this is just the way the river smells.
Not a tourist site, but next to one
In order to actually visit and see the river’s source, which I thought might be little more than a backwoods swamp, I went to the Great Lakes Dragaway deep in its offseason and walked across County Highway KR (also known as 1st Street) into a cornfield, which is ringed on its southeastern edges by the marshy declivity that is the river’s humble beginning. I was able to trace it to the back northeast corner of the cornfield, shorn then for the winter, to a shallow pool deep in marsh growth where at least three outtake pipes disgorge groundwater, though on this dry December day only one was discharging.
These pipes emerge from the ground below the raised field level, suggesting that the water they are carrying probably originates in an aquifer, even if these pipes don’t necessarily connect directly to it. It’s possible they may also be channeling other kinds of groundwater, such as that which literally soaks into the ground from rainfall and crop watering. In any case, the small, shallow pool they form drains southward into a narrow, miniature river valley, whose water level I could imagine rising up to and even flooding the much higher fields during heavy rains or winter thaws. (I discuss Des Plaines River flooding here.)
This miniature river valley is really just a river gouge at this point, its banks suffused with marsh and wetland vegetation, bordering a field upon which I had surely trespassed. After flowing south for perhaps three hundred yards the river makes an abrupt though momentary turn west to form a ditch running alongside Hwy KR until, another two hundred yards later, it turns southward again to flow through a culvert under the road. It then straightens out a bit and runs alongside the Great Lakes Dragaway, from where it lazily meanders through miles of cornfields as it makes its way towards the Illinois border.
This view of the Des Plaines running parallel to the west side of the Great Lakes Dragaway is the first public view of the river, though there is no signage to indicate what it is. Because it is fairly narrow here, and thick with marsh vegetation on either side, it’s more noticeable when driving over it on Highway KR, a few yards west of the racetrack driveway, than it is from the racetrack grounds. Even in December, when I visited, the riverside vegetation was still so high and thick that it took real effort to walk through it to get near the water.
From this point it flows mostly south until it passes under Route 50, the main Wisconsin state highway that runs between Kenosha and Lake Geneva, where the river turns east and follows a succession of twists and turns on its way to the Illinois border.
Looking everywhere for signs
On the day of my visit I confirmed that Route 50 bears the northernmost public signage identifying the Des Plaines River, though it does pass under three other county roads between the drag strip and Route 50: Burlington Road, 38th St. and 60th St. The bridges crossing over the Des Plaines on these three roads do not identify the Des Plaines River. There is also a Des Plaines River sign on I-94 just south of Route 50, near the Jean McGraw Memorial Nature Center. This is the northernmost interstate signage for the Des Plaines. I can also report that the southernmost is on I-55 in Channahon.
I never imagined myself the kind of nut case who would observe and acknowledge such arcane minutiae, much less record it in a notebook (and repeat it here). Some who know me would probably say it isn’t surprising, especially those who have profited from having me as a teammate during tavern trivia contests. But this seems a little overboard even for me, as do the efforts I expended to gather such minutiae. Confirming the northernmost instances of Des Plaines River signage meant walking various lengths of roads and highways to get to each bridge – it was important to me, for reasons my therapist will probably never be able to decipher, that I document signage status on foot whenever possible, even at risk to my physical person – a ridiculous ritual that I think I adopted because it added steps and distance to my exercise stats. And since I was adding an obsessive dimension to an already obsessive undertaking anyway, I expanded my sign observations to include instances when road names are posted on overpasses, where they help water travelers with their bearings.
I would see plenty of examples of this in Illinois, but not in Wisconsin. As it turns out, there are only the two instances I just cited of any Des Plaines River signage in Wisconsin: the one on Route 50, and the one on I-94 by the Jean McGraw Preserve.
Should this question ever come up during a tavern contest or Trivial Pursuit game, you’ve got this covered.