Mile 3.3 – 17: Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin
First visit: Dec. 29, 2022 Public trail? Mostly Private land? A smidge Distance walked: 8.5 miles
When I was 18, the drinking age in Wisconsin was 18. In Illinois, where I lived, the drinking age was 19. Astute readers can infer the significance of this, but can only imagine the startling Wisconsin-grade debauchery this led to among my friends and me, as we became weekend pilgrims to a now-defunct bar called the Top Deck in Lake Geneva. This was the summer of 1977, right after high school graduation, and our ill-advised return drives often included a visit to the legendary Brat Stop, located on Wisconsin Route 50 at I-94, where we imagined that baskets of brats and fries would soak up the alcohol pooling stupidly in our stomachs.
I can report to my younger self that the Brat Stop is still in business and is possibly even more popular now. And I am lucky and grateful to have survived those youthful kamikaze runs so that I could explore the Des Plaines River in my dotage… and then go have lunch there.
Conveniently, the Jean McGraw Memorial Nature Preserve is less than two miles south of the Brat Stop, off the frontage road immediately west of I-94, and offers the first public trail on the Des Plaines River. It’s a small preserve with a short loop trail system on the south/west bank of the river, with a view of where the Root River flows into the Des Plaines – the first tributary of any size that feeds the river. On the frosty December day I first came here I was able to walk off trail and into the frozen marshland, which got me a bit closer to where the Root River comes in from the northwest, and then south to where the Des Plaines spreads and flows through its prairie basin from the west, in a fashion resembling what I thought the river’s source would look like.
This serpentine river begins to urbanize
If these directions sound confusing, it’s because the Des Plaines has become a winding river here, twisting and turning through prairie land as it makes is way generally east and south. Rivers do this, I’ve reasoned, because flowing water tends to follow land contours – and sometimes causes them, too – and this twisty tendency in the Des Plaines will be repeated all the way south to I-55 in the Chicago area, where it was straightened out to run parallel to some canals. But that’s a different part of the river’s story, and we will get to that later.
This nature preserve is separated by I-94 from an otherwise adjacent preserve called the Coker Property, through which the Des Plaines River continues on its southeasterly course towards Illinois, and both are managed by a land trust called the Seno K/RLT Conservancy, a non-profit “dedicated to sustainable forestry, natural resources education, conservation, and land preservation”, according to its website. Hiking and cross country skiing are allowed both places, as are fishing, trapping and bow hunting, per a posted sign. I’ve been informed this is also a good spot to put in a canoe or kayak, though there is no formal launch here.
As with most points along the Des Plaines, visitors here are only barely removed from civilization. I could hear and see traffic from I-94 from virtually everywhere I went, not to mention the backside of a massive car dealership just north of the river. The park nonetheless presents a pastoral view of both rivers, and is a credit to the Conservancy, whose mission is to preserve land and restore habitat across its holdings on 1,266 acres in Kenosha and Racine counties. The marsh here is naturally beautiful and appears to be very healthy.
Despite urban encroachment, like the dealership and the interstate, the river here still has the look of a country stream – if you ignore the highway overpass – and on the day I visited was no more than fifty to sixty feet across (dimensions here and elsewhere are relative and affected by water levels). I saw a possum foraging in the weeds by the river, which scurried into a culvert under I-94 when it sensed my presence. More intriguing to me is the form and nature of the Des Plaines as it flows into this park from the west, where I can’t discern its shape amidst the savannah it’s flowing through. I in fact mistook this part of the Des Plaines as a brook or a runoff, and mistook the Root River for the Des Plaines, before using my phone to clarify my location.
The river was mostly frozen when I first visited in December, though water was moving both where the Root River entered and where the Des Plaines came seeping in from the southwest. On the cement bank of the I-94 southbound overpass I saw signs of what I took to be squatting, with a burn pit built of river rocks and quite a bit of litter. I was tempted to cross under the dual overpasses and see the river from the east side of the expressway (this was before I realized you can just drive over there) but was concerned about the possibility of encountering whoever may have used the burn pit. “Sixty-three year old man hiking alone whose only weapon was an iPhone…” I didn’t like the sound of those words describing me in a news report.
Trailblazing off I-94
I went back to the Kenosha area during the second week of January, on an unseasonably warm and sunny day, determined to check out all the things I’d missed on my first visit. Such as the adjacent Coker Property, which I learned about when visiting the website for the Seno K/RLT Conservancy.
But first, I had to feed my growing obsession with a visit to County Highway MB, just a click or two north of Wilmot Road, where there was one Des Plaines River bridge I’d missed on my earlier visit. As with many other bridge inspections, I parked a distance away and walked, noting the river and its marshy surroundings on both sides of the road. And also noting the lack of a Des Plaines River sign on the bridge (see Source chapter).
Looking much like it does at most Wisconsin crossings, this is not a stretch of river offering much in the way of walking. Although by that time I’d already done a fair bit of off trail exploration – both ill-advised and not-as-badly-ill-advised – these densely overgrown areas looked a little too rough even for an obsessive like me.
I quickly overcame these reservations, however, when I pulled onto the shoulder of the I-94 frontage road on the other side of the overpass and walked down into the aforementioned Coker Property. I wasn’t sure if this was considered publicly accessible land, but by then I’d had a few run-ins with “Keep Out” signs in other locations and there didn’t appear to be any here. So I walked as far as I could along the river’s west bank, from which I could see where another small tributary feeds the Des Plaines – in this case something called the Kilbourn Road Ditch. From there I was almost able to get to Wilmot Rd., but was stymied by an especially swampy patch more hospitable to frogs than people.
Fairly wild even by my evolving standards, there are plans to “restore” this parcel of land sometime in the future. I learned this from Mark Lesko, President of the Seno K/RLT Conservancy, who took the time to write me a reply to some questions I had about the Jean McGraw Preserve. Such as: who was Jean McGraw? According to Mark, she was a nature enthusiast, Sierra Club activist and longtime K/RLT board member, who also served with the American Red Cross during WWII. “Restore” in this case means the creation of hiking trails like those at the Jean McGraw Reserve. He also added, “when we last met with the Village of Pleasant Prairie Planning Committee [about restoring the Coker Property], they stated a future intent to make the river corridor in their town accessible to the public with trails….exactly what you are trying to walk.”
Pleasant Prairie: the first river community
And this offers a convenient segue to Pleasant Prairie, where I would conduct the rest of my Wisconsin activities this January day. Whereas all my Wisconsin encounters with the river so far were either “in the wild”, or within land parcels owned and managed by the public/private K/RLT Conservancy, my next few stops would be within Pleasant Prairie city limits, including a couple of municipal parks.
Before I could get to those, however, I first had another bridge to inspect, a prospect that had intimidated me so much the last time I’d been here that I’d failed to do it. This is the bridge where Wilmot Road crosses the Des Plaines, and is actually two bridges side-by-side: a vehicular bridge and a newer pedestrian bridge, neither of which are signed – which I suspected from my prior visit, but was too chicken to confirm. The reason for my earlier cowardice is because there isn’t a convenient place to park in order to inspect the bridge on foot. The best and nearest I could find was a street space inside the River Oaks subdivision, and while I didn’t see any “No Parking” signs there, it looks exactly like the kind of place where my car would get towed, an impression reinforced by the Neighborhood Watch and CCTV signs posted everywhere.
Pleasant Prairie, which is a kind of exurb or bedroom hamlet for Milwaukee and/or Chicago, is the first community on the Des Plaines River, and had I been able to continue walking the river’s west bank from the Coker Property, I would have ended up across the river from the homes on 113th Ave. in the River Oaks development.
A classic post-war subdivision, the houses that back up to the Des Plaines River there look more rustic than their neighbors, maybe even a little wild. That’s in part because they’re on land considered to be a riparian zone, a term used to describe “the lands that occur along the edges of rivers, streams, lakes, and other water bodies. They’re different from the surrounding uplands because their soils and vegetation are shaped by the presence of water.” That’s from the U.S. National Park Service. In Pleasant Prairie there are a couple of residential streets that fall under this definition: 113th and 114th Avenues, the latter of which is also called River Road – the first of many so called from here to Channahon. From coast to coast, in fact, and probably all over the world.
Pleasant Prairie is the northernmost of the numerous residential communities established along the banks of the Des Plaines River and is the only one in Wisconsin. It’s noteworthy first because it’s first, and second because it shows the least obvious evidence of encroachment on the river, existing more as neighbors to the river than property extensions. The water here was very clear on the cold but sunny day I visited in early January, clear enough that I could see bottom from the pedestrian bridge on Wilmot Road.
And the first city trails
Besides the river’s passage beneath Wilmot Road, there are two public trails in Pleasant Prairie with access to the river, and both have trailheads at Lake Andrea, a local park and recreation facility. During my first visit, at the end of December, I hadn’t known about the second trail, so my destination was the Jerome Creek Nature Preserve, which I reached using the Donald Hackbarth Trail. Though only a small length of the Des Plaines is visible and publicly accessible here, this is a beautiful little park and wetland preserve, with street parking at the northern end of the Donald Hackbarth trail, off 114th Street, which is where I parked.
From here it’s an easy hike on a groomed, gravel trail to a wooden boardwalk that spans the point where Jerome Creek flows into the Des Plaines River. The trail then skirts a beautiful wetland preserve and winds through the forest towards Lake Andrea, but doesn’t afford any more views of the Des Plaines — although you can see the new gargantuan Haribo facility in the distance. In my attempts to go off trail and find the river, I encountered very thick vegetation and aggressive wild roses, which grow as prickly vines along virtually the entire Des Plaines River, discouraging off trail detours by sticking and scratching ne’er-do-wells like me. I nonetheless hacked and stumbled my way through the unruly brush until I found it completely unpassable. (These wild roses are one of many non-native invasive plants plaguing the Des Plaines River watershed, which I cover in greater detail here.)
On the trip back to my car I detoured yet again, walking a mown strip of prairie that borders first the river’s spillway and then some woods that turned out to be private property. I did try to walk across the spillway, but it was too mucky to make it to the river, even being mostly frozen. I also started into the woods but saw Private Property warnings posted on trees. This private land appears to run behind all the lots on 114th St., and based on a small fraction I wandered into that day, it looks to be left largely in its native state, which is fitting given the riparian zone information signs in the Preserve.
It turns out that section of the Des Plaines River is accessible, in a fashion, via the other trail I learned about later: the Prairie Farms Trail. I say “in a fashion” because, while this trail does indeed have sections near the river, the river can’t actually be seen because of the dense forest bordering the trail. That’s a good thing, in that it insulates the river and its wildlife from the disruptive incursions of oafs like me. Or it should. On this day, however, I was not to be deterred – I had, after all, just walked about a half-mile in thick brush back at the Coker Property – so I exited the official trail where I thought it was closest to the river and quickly wished I’d brought a machete.
About going off trail…
I didn’t set out to walk the entirety of the Des Plaines River – or even those portions that are publicly accessible – which explains why there appears to be a randomness to my wanderings. As it happened, by the time I was getting around to tying up loose ends in Wisconsin I’d already been all over the place downriver, and going off trail had by that point become fairly routine – even considering the unique obstacles and challenges encountered with each detour. Every time I went off trail I did so in order to get closer to the river, to see something not visible from the trail, maybe hoping for a more intimate encounter with nature, and I frequently found other trails in the process – some probably just deer trails, some more clearly used by humans, but all pursuing the river, like I was. Sometimes, though, it was me who was being the trailblazer, and if we’ve learned nothing else from this life, we should have learned there’s always risk in trailblazing. The Des Plaines River basin may not be the Amazon, but the same off trail cautions apply. Or should.
The dense woods and marsh I stepped into on the Prairie Farms Trail weren’t totally alien to me, as the Des Plaines riparian zone doesn’t really change along its short 133-mile journey. That sense of familiarity may be why I was a little lax at times, especially when distracted by sight of the river, and accounts for the spill I took when I wandered off the Prairie Farms Trail and got taken down by a fallen tree covered in undergrowth. I was, thankfully, able to get up and brush myself off, but if I’d landed just a degree or two away from where I had, I’m pretty sure I could have broken something. Leg, ankle, arm, wrist. All of the above would be an option for an old guy like me. As it was, I jammed one of my toes and bruised it badly enough that the toenail eventually came off.
You’ll hear me describe a few other falls I took during my walks, and collectively they should serve as a cautionary tale whose moral is about prudence and common sense and rule-following, and it isn’t like I disagree with the overall sentiment. Going off trail like I’ve been doing… it isn’t what normal people do. Ten-year-old boys maybe, but they aren’t normal people. In any case, just because I did it doesn’t mean I condone or encourage it. It can be dangerous, no matter how tame it may look to you, no matter your age or physical condition, and especially when hiking alone. That’s why those nice, safe trails exist. Sane and sensible people keep to the trails, and if the Des Plaines River is so darned important to see, well, go see it at Jean McGraw or Jerome Creek.