Mile 133: Channahon, Illinois
First visit: Dec. 15, 2022 Public trail? Yes Private land? No Distance walked: 5 miles
The first time I saw the end of the Des Plaines River, or more properly its confluence with the Illinois River, I couldn’t determine where exactly the one ends and the other begins, so I walked all the way out to the Dresden Dam on the I&M Canal Trail – a bit of overkill, as the dam is at least a mile-and-a-half in on the Illinois. That means I definitely saw the confluence, but I still don’t know exactly where it is, or how you’d know when you were looking at it. Maps, and my iPhone’s GPS, were of no help in making this determination, and there’s no signage that I’ve ever seen. For all I know the concept doesn’t even apply on land.
Maybe because I didn’t follow any particular order walking from the river’s start to its end, my visits here never evoked a sense of finality or ending. But I did have a pretty amazing experience the first time I came here, when I had to park in the upper lot at the Frederick’s Grove area of McKinley Woods because the lower lot was closed. This forced me to walk downhill to get to the I&M Canal Trail, and the effect of seeing the river as it emerges from dense tree cover made me catch my breath for a second. I know the river is at its widest down here, as I’d already seen that from various bridges. Still, walking down that hill directly into the center of a U-bend in the river, it was the first time I would use the term “majestic” to describe it.
Having seen the Des Plaines River from so many locations by now, a few places immediately distinguish themselves for their sheer natural beauty. The stretch of the Des Plaines River Trail between Wadsworth Rd. and Skokie Highway, for instance, and the section just a little further south around Adler Park in Libertyville. And the town of Riverside… honestly, I don’t know enough adjectives to do it justice.
The river is different here
For all of that, seeing the river in Will County was a revelation, and I encourage anyone curious about the river to make a trip to Channahon. Specifically, start at the Four Rivers Environmental Education Center and walk the paths there, then walk out onto the I&M Canal Trail and turn left. If you’re feeling hardy, it’s about 3 miles from Four Rivers to the confluence with the Illinois. If you’re feeling extra hardy, keep going to the Dresden Dam, which is still another 1.5 miles past the confluence. Of course, you’ll have to walk all the way back from there too, which I estimate is a total of about 9 miles round-trip. Add another mile or so if you include the short trails at Four Rivers, which offer some spectacular views of the river.
But it’s an easy gravel trail, running between the river and the now-wild Illinois & Michigan (I&M) Canal, and aside from an ugly power plant belching its exhaust on the other side of the confluence, it’s a kind of showcase for nature down here. On the winter day I first visited I saw geese, ducks, swans, deer and a muskrat, which covertly scurried into the canal with hardly a splash. On a subsequent visit in March I saw a heron. Speak with the staff at Four Rivers and they’ll proudly point out eagles’ nests in the nearby trees.
For the record, it took me three trips to the area before I walked the route I just described, but this allowed me to see many other beautiful places around there, such as Frederick’s Grove in McKinley Woods, and the big boat marinas that seem so improbable on the Des Plaines. On two of those occasions, I also explored a southern spur of the river in Wilmington that some maps label the Des Plaines River, some call Grant Creek, and some the Kankakee Cutoff. Whatever it’s called it was hunting season when I went, and frequent shotgun blasts shortened my excursion there.
One of the most amazing sites along the river, and one I was very surprised to learn about, is Briscoe Mounds, one of only five native burial grounds in the state, and the closest to Chicago. Now the property of the Illinois DNR, and a very quick drive from Four Rivers, these are sacred burial mounds dating back to a village on the river here in the 1200’s. That such an important archaeological site remains at all in the Chicago area is amazing, never mind that it’s on the Des Plaines River.
Why not see Channahon?
The Will County Forest Preserves along the Des Plaines are filled with surprises, at least to a Cook County guy like me, and on a comparatively grander scale than up north. The Lockport Prairie Nature Preserve, where I tried (unsuccessfully) to walk off trail to the Lockport Powerhouse, is a beautiful study in prairie restoration, where native plants are re-establishing themselves amidst limestone rubble in what is part of a larger 2,400-acre Des Plaines River preservation system. Likewise the Rock Run Rookery, with its short boardwalk trail along the river, is breathtaking in its own right, an immense quarry filled with water that attracts herons and cormorants. You’re in fact never far from a quarry or a stone foundry down here, and stray pieces of limestone are everywhere to serve as reminders of how geology and industry influence the area.
For me, the preserves and the scenery in Channahon are among the most amazing sights anywhere along the Des Plaines River. The surroundings feel rural, like its origins in Racine and Kenosha Counties, but it’s hilly here as well. And the limestone. When you walk downhill at Frederick’s Grove and encounter the dramatic u-bend in the river, you’re walking onto an IDNR campground featuring several iconic and photogenic limestone structures.
In the meantime, the river itself by this point is wide and mighty, carrying most of the Chicago area’s wastewater – which originates in Lake Michigan – towards its date with the Mississippi River. (I’ve wondered about the ratio of wastewater to naturally occurring water in the Des Plaines, but so far I haven’t been able to piece this bit of data together.)
My father was an avid walleye fisherman and raised his three sons to share his passion. To this day my brothers and I make at least one trip a year up to Lake Kabetogama in northern Minnesota to try and outsmart the walleye there. We go there in part because of tradition – our family has been going there for a century – even though we know there are walleye closer to home. But I didn’t realize how much closer until I went to the Four Rivers Center and saw walleye in the display tank. Of all the surprises that have greeted me along the Des Plaines, I think I was least prepared to learn there are walleye in the river. I’m not sure I’d eat one, but I met plenty of anglers who do.
Down here in Channahon hunting blinds share the river with large fishing boats and what look to me like yachts. There are of course the barges mentioned earlier, not to mention other types of boats commonly seen on the Great Lakes. And as if all of that weren’t surprising enough, at least for me, Channahon was also home to a WWII Nazi prisoner work camp on the banks of the Des Plaines River (there was one on the river in Des Plaines as well).
Where does the Des Plaines actually end?
The point on the I&M Canal Trail that I’ve come to regard as the practical confluence, if not the actual spot, is a small nub of land sticking out into the water from where you can see the Des Plaines upriver and the Illinois downriver, as well as the Kankakee’s merger across the way. There’s a bench there with a downriver view of the Illinois, and a shrine of sorts that may be a combination of memorial and marker, possibly observing the start of the Illinois River. It seems informal, yet somehow also formal. I don’t know if there is some kind of nautical tradition of marking a navigable river’s beginning, but until someone tells me otherwise, I consider this the riverine equivalent to a border marker.
It might be possible to locate the actual confluence using the River Mile, or RM system, which the USACE uses to help identify specific points along a river’s course. I first encountered the concept of an RM when I was trying to understand where exactly the Sanitary and Ship Canal meets the Des Plaines (read more about that dubious effort here), but because there are two potential merger points north of its true confluence, I’m still stumped by how the USACE determines the RM. As if to confuse me further, RMs appear to be counted going south-to-north, or mouth-to-source, so the fact that the San Ship confluence is in the mid-300’s means nothing to me, because I’m counting miles going in the opposite direction. As far as I’m concerned, the Des Plaines River is only 133 miles long, so how could it have an RM in the 300s? Had they asked me, I’d have fashioned RMs along the lines of my travelogue, starting at the source following the flow.
This confluence point with the shrine seems to be on Illinois DNR land. All of the I&M Canal Trail down here seems to be, even though it’s only a few yards across the canal from a Will County Forest Preserve. I’m not even sure the confluence itself is in Will County. On some maps it looks like it might actually be Grundy County. And as for the river itself, and who has jurisdiction over it down here, I’m not entirely sure about that either. It’s considered part of the Illinois Waterway system in these parts, which is overseen by the USACE. Yet the Illinois DNR and the Illinois EPA have some degree of authority as well, as does the Coast Guard. Up north, at least, the Forest Preserves seem to have actual ownership of parts of the river. Maybe the river is under shared custody down here. Maybe it is everywhere, and maybe all rivers are. And maybe because those are all public bodies, maybe the river ultimately is too, and therefore belongs to everyone.
I guess I’m still learning. That’s been the best part of my project, or my quest, or my neurotic obsession: even in the decrepitude of old age, I’m still learning new things all the time. And not just about the river, but about the larger Des Plaines watershed, and northeastern Illinois, and Chicago, and the Great Lakes. They’re all connected via the Des Plaines River, and at the risk of overdramatizing, the future of each will be determined by it.
In the meantime, I’ve been positively surprised and encouraged by what I see as the improving health of the river and its natural surroundings. I don’t pretend that there isn’t still a long way to go, or that the river will ever again return to its true native state. But every time I’ve tried to hack through dense vegetation off trail, or stopped to admire the carving talent of a beaver, or tried to quietly approach an enormous white swan who could probably decapitate me, I’ve lately been whispering a small mantra to myself that the Forest Preserves should adopt for their slogan:
Respect. Restore. Preserve.