Mile 25.6: Zion/ Wadsworth (DPRT)
First visit: Nov. 26, 2022 Public trail? Yes Private land? No Distance walked: 6.6 miles
As someone who has lived virtually his entire life within a short el ride of the Loop, northern Illinois has always seemed to have more in common with Wisconsin than it does with Chicago. Part of the reason may be that I’ve had occasion to drive Sheridan Road through Kenosha and south towards Illinois State Beach, a much more pleasant route than I-94 because of its proximity to Lake Michigan and because of the many lakeside communities it passes through, and there’s no noticeable demarcation when passing out of Wisconsin and into Illinois (aside from the cannabis billboards). The geography doesn’t change, the roadside homes and businesses don’t change, and the amazing views of Lake Michigan don’t change. Sheridan Road runs its entire length along Lake Michigan, and in fact is the only road in Chicago where residential buildings sit literally on the lakefront.
Just south of the Illinois state line, the Des Plaines River begins to widen and take on the proportions of an actual river, after starting its journey in Union Grove as little more than a country stream. It is first visible in Illinois on the north side of Russell Road in Wadsworth, where it runs behind some houses just west of 88th Avenue. From there it flows briefly west and then turns south, towards the first point of public access in Illinois: the Russell Road Canoe Launch.
This canoe launch, one of at least 15 that I saw in my travels, is the northernmost point of public access to the river in Illinois. Although there are no official hiking trails here, it is possible to walk along the shore on both sides of the river, and on both sides of Russell Road. Doing so is neither encouraged nor discouraged, at least not explicitly, but in many spots along the water here the going is marshy and thick with brush, not to mention the wild rose vines that insistently make their scratchy presence known to pesky off trail wanderers like me. The river is clear here, barring any recent rains or snowmelt that stir up the bottom, and is wide enough to accommodate multiple canoes or kayaks.
Welcome to the Des Plaines River Trail
The Des Plaines River Trail (DPRT), where I have by now logged literally hundreds of miles of out-and-back hiking, starts at the Russell Rd. entry to Van Patten Woods, a Lake County Forest Preserve. A visit to the Forest Preserve’s website informs us that the DPRT runs uninterrupted through the entire length of Lake County, covering over 31 miles and 12 Forest Preserves. The trail in fact runs for a total length of 58.6 miles, all the way down to North Ave. in Cook County. The good news is that it’s mostly clay and gravel in Lake County, making for a fairly easy walk. For the first half-mile or so the river is blocked from view by dense vegetation, part of what’s called the Greenway, a natural (and restored) floodplain the likes of which are encountered throughout the river’s course. But finally it comes into view where the trail splits to go around Sterling Lake, one of many lakes, ponds and sloughs formed in abandoned quarries all throughout the river’s journey through Illinois.
Van Patten Woods has several trail networks, including a figure-8 route that circles through the forest before intersecting with the DPRT. The pedestrian bridge between the two trail loops here offers a beautiful view of the river as it widens and flows south, and on this late fall morning I saw some mallards on the water. I returned in mid-January, about six weeks after my first visit, and took the DPRT south from Rosecrans to Wadsworth Road, where it runs first through the Sterling Lake Forest Preserve and then just west of the Wadsworth Prairie Nature Preserve. As in Van Patten Woods the trail here is compacted gravel, and though there are some minor changes in elevation, there’s nothing very strenuous in terms of hills. Off trail, however…
Going off the beaten path
I went off trail a couple of times to get nearer the water, as I did on almost all of my hikes, and barked my shin tripping over something buried in deep cover. As an old guy in his mid-sixties hiking alone in the brush, any fall could be an existential threat, even this close to civilization, and especially at this time of year, when few people are on the trails. Had I fractured an ankle or a leg, and had my cell phone been flung away from me or broken in the fall, I could have been stranded there, my howls and cries indistinguishable from the coyotes who’d probably eat me overnight. This is a Top 2 reason why off-trail detours are discouraged – the other of course being habitat preservation.
Nonetheless, as long as there is no significant snow, I’ve found winter to be a good time of year to go off-trail, if that’s what you are determined to do. The normally marshy ground tends to be dryer and more solid, and of course there are no bugs. The prickly rose vines are still a menace, however, as are various plants with burr-like seed pods that attach like Velcro to almost any available surface – especially Velcro. I spent a disproportionate amount of time during my winter hikes painstakingly removing these hitchhikers from my gloves and pants one seed at a time, dropping them along my route pretty much the way nature intended us mammals to do.
I would come back up here a few more times to continue my trek southward towards Gurnee, getting turned back one day by trail flooding that had dried when I returned a week later. The trail network from Wadsworth Road to Mill Creek is among the most beautiful stretches of river anywhere I’ve been, and includes three parallel north-south trail runs that converge near North Mill Creek, which merges with the river here.
As beautiful as this area is, the trails are located fairly close to both I-94 and Skokie Highway, and it was possible to hear traffic virtually everywhere I hiked – an unsurprising occurrence given how the Des Plaines becomes increasingly urbanized as it flows south in Illinois. Having hiked along many rivers, from the St. Lawrence to the Columbia, I’ve found this to be more rule than exception. Up here in northeastern Illinois, the nearby I-94 corridor is the main artery of an expanding megalopolis, and throughout its own southbound course towards I-55 will roughly parallel that of the Des Plaines River, and cross over it more than once. It’s not surprising that interstates should follow water, given the roles of trade and transportation in human settlement, and further south I-55 will replace I-94 as it follows the Des Plaines towards its date with the Kankakee River. Even old Route 66, which exists more as a novelty nowadays than a trade route, hews close to the Des Plaines near its eastern origins.
About the Forest Preserves
Custodianship of the river seems to span a few different public agencies, which suggests that no single entity bears full responsibility. In Illinois, the state EPA and DNR provide environmental oversight, while various municipal bodies, including the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) and the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) are responsible for the quality of processed waste and stormwater that is discharged into the Des Plaines. Some parts of the river, especially south of Lyons, are under the control of the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and it isn’t unusual to see Coast Guard vessels on patrol – though it’s still a surprising sight, at least for me. While the river is never present in a state park, much less anything as grandiose as a national park, there are several National Historic Sites on the river considered units of the National Park System, including the Chicago Portage site in Lyons and the Brandon Road Lock and Dam.
I’ll ponder questions of responsibility, authority and “ownership” of the river in a little more detail later, but I want to take a moment here to recognize the role played by the different Forest Preserve agencies whose properties I spent a great deal of time in.
The Illinois Forest Preserves, found in twenty Illinois counties (out of 102), exist as the result of state legislation passed in 1913 meant to do exactly what their name says: preserve forests. While exploring the Des Plaines River, I spent considerable time in Forest Preserves owned by Lake, Cook, Du Page and Will Counties, each of which protects natural land parcels on one or both sides of the river, many of which feature public hiking trails in addition to other features, such as nature centers, picnic groves and canoe launches. These riverside trails and facilities are arguably the best environments in which to explore and experience the Des Plaines River, as it is possible to imagine the river in its most wild and natural state. At least until the trails take you under or across the next busy street or train trestle.
When The Lake County Forest Preserve District was founded in 1958, a chief priority was the preservation and restoration of the Des Plaines River basin as it winds its way south through the county, along with a commitment to accommodate public access to the river. The DPRT, which presently extends into Cook County as well, is said to protect more than 76% of the river in Lake County.
While some Forest Preserve property has been donated, after relatively “gentle” treatment by prior owners (e.g., the Edward L. Ryerson Conservation Area), much of the land has been acquired after having been stripped of every exploitable resource and left to languish in varying degrees of neglect, decrepitude and worse. This is true of land in the Des Plaines watershed, but is also true of other Forest Preserve land, and of public parks owned by other agencies as well. Not to put too fine a point on matters, but we the taxpayers end up picking up the tab for both acquiring and restoring land so ravaged by prior use that nobody else even wants it. Consider Red Gate Woods, a Cook County Forest Preserve in Lemont, where the world’s first nuclear reactor is buried, and where concerns over radioactivity levels have periodically closed the area for cleanup.
Having said that, these same lands came to represent some of the most encouraging signs I would see of natural rehabilitation. In fact, having begun my river quest from a position of almost total ignorance, I was actually surprised to learn that parts of Van Patten Woods, for example, had once been so scarred and plundered by industry as to be unrecognizable from their presently recovering form.
Like you, possibly, I’m one of the taxpayers on the hook for this long-haul restoration, and while we’d be excused for bearing some resentment for this unfortunate circumstance, it’s nevertheless important work for the environment we live in, a fact reinforced for me every time I encountered marshland vibrant with frogs, egrets and beaver-gnawed logs that had been off-gassing noxious chemicals just a generation or two back.
I will say this again and again throughout my Des Plaines River chronicle: I’m grateful for the work being done by the various Forest Preserve agencies in allowing nature to reassert itself all throughout the Chicago area.