You’re walking through a virgin stretch of woods along the Des Plaines River in southern Lake County. It’s a wild place, accessible only by off-trail hiking. (Best done in colder months, as bugs and poison ivy own the place in summer.) You’ve had luck here seeing deer, fox and, once, a great horned owl staring back at you from a nearby branch.
On this day, you spot something unfamiliar–a surveyor’s stake, colored taxicab yellow. Then another about 50 feet away. Beyond it another. You follow and discover they form a line disappearing into the distance. It seems that someone’s been in your woods. Someone with a plan.
These yellow stakes are the first steps in the creation of another link in a wilderness path that will run the length of Lake County from top to bottom. It’s called the Des Plaines River Trail, now more than 50 percent complete and slated for a new growth spurt this summer.
When finished, it will be just one more link in a national network of uninterrupted “hikeways,” an environmentally friendly interstate for the sole use of those on foot, bicycle or horseback.
As Edward Abbey, the earth-defending essayist and novelist, once wrote, “Beyond the wall of the unreal city . . . there is another world waiting . . . the old true world of deserts, mountains, forests . . . plains. Go there. . . .”
We may not have the deserts or mountains Abbey referred to. But we have forests, plains and rivers. And we can go to them easily, because we were smart enough to keep them around. (Abbey also said, “God bless America–let’s save some of it!” Lake County did.)
“The crown jewel of Lake County’s forest preserve system is the `greenway’ that runs along the Des Plaines River,” says Sarah Surroz, public information coordinator with the Lake County Forest Preserve District. “It’s composed of 5,000 acres owned by the people of Lake County, including a chain of 10 separate preserves.”
Running right through the heart of this greenway you’ll find the growing Des Plaines River Trail. Currently it exists in two nine-mile sections. Each is a crushed gravel path wide enough for two lanes of human or equine traffic, meandering north and south through prairies, woodlands, wetlands and existing forest preserves with trails of their own that can be accessed.
New construction is beginning on both stretches of trail, narrowing the gap between them, and engineering plans have been started that will take the south section farther toward Cook County and a growing network of trails that span the country.
Here’s where you’ll find the two current trail sections, and some of the highlights to enjoy while using them.
North Trail
This section begins in Van Patten Woods at Russell Road, just south of the Wisconsin line. It winds through the 972-acre preserve, which offers parking, bicycle rentals, picnic areas, shelters, drinking fountains, fishing and paddle boating on 74-acre Sterling Lake.
The trail bridges the Des Plaines River and moves into Wadsworth Savanna, 1,200 pristine acres that are part of the Illinois Nature Preserves system. It passes through the award-winning Wetlands Demonstration Project where water-cleansing basins provide abundant and valuable wetland habitat.
There’s another bridge over the river, more fishing opportunities in a small lake and a 2-mile woodland hike until the trail ends at U.S. Highway 41 in Gurnee.
According to Mike Fenelon, director of planning, conservation and development for the Lake County forest preserves, “New construction on the North Trail has been started this month and will continue through November. It’ll extend the trail southward 1 1/2 miles, involve the building of a bridge over Route 41 and proceed uninterrupted to Old Grand Avenue in Gurnee and a new parking facility.”
Parking is important, because trail users may be dropped off uptrail and arrange to be picked up at the end of their hike without having to backtrack.
South Trail
This slightly more wooded section begins at Old Rockland Road near the river in Libertyville, adjacent to Old School Forest Preserve, where there is parking, fishing, phones, shelters and drinking fountains.
It connects to MacArthur Woods, a 504-acre woodland in the Illinois Nature Preserves system where rare wildlife environments are protected and special care of the land is encouraged. It then spans the Des Plaines River, goes under Illinois Highway 60 and follows the river through Daniel Wright Woods, on to the Half Day Preserve, where there are shelters, phones, a fishing lake and parking.
“New work on the South Trail, also begun this month, includes a northward extension along wooded floodplain for 3 miles to Buckley Road, closing the gap between the North and South Trails to just 4 1/2 miles,” Fenelon says. “Currently in engineering is an extension of the south end, which will take the trail 1 1/2 miles farther, crossing Half Day Road, stopping just short of Ryerson Woods in Riverwoods.”
Within five years, plans call for the two trails to meet and the south leg to extend through Ryerson to Lake-Cook Road, where an overpass has just been constructed for the trail, taking it into Cook County and beyond. It will be 33 miles in length when completed.
Just how long is a 33-mile trip by hiking, bicycling or horseback riding? To put it in car-culture terms, if you drove down U.S. 41 from Lake Forest, merging into the Edens and Kennedy Expressways, exiting in Chicago at Ohio Street, then proceeded to the Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue, that’s about 33 miles.
Some people currently use the Des Plaines River Trail as a healthful means of commuting to work. One example is Jean Weeg, an environmental educator with the forest preserve district. She lives in northern Lake County but works in the southern part.
During good weather, “I drive to Vernon Hills, park near the entrance to the trail at Route 60, then bike south to Half Day Road and on to my job in Riverwoods,” she says. “It takes about half an hour–as long as it would take to go by car, considering today’s traffic. It’s a good way to commute while getting a workout and getting close to nature at the same time.”
Getting close to nature is what the Des Plaines River Trail is all about. It’s a people’s thoroughfare through shady woodlands and open savannas. No cars, no road grit, no exhaust (except in winter from occasional snowmobiles, which are permitted only on the North Trail.
Generally, the air is clean, refreshed daily by trees that exhale oxygen. There are the elemental smells of damp ground, pines and Midwestern leafy trees, prairie grass and wildflowers.
Wildflower watching is particularly good on the South Trail right now. According to Surroz, in late April, prior to the full leafing of surrounding trees, woodland flowers get enough sun to run through most of their life cycles. “MacArthur Woods is a good place for them,” she says. “They can be spotted from the trail.”
Watch for bright white bloodroot, light purple hepatica, pale pink spring beauty, lavender wild geranium and white trillium. No picking, please.
Wildlife abounds near the trail. “You could see snowy egrets, yellow-headed blackbirds (especially at Wadsworth Savanna), sandhill cranes, owls,” Fenelon says. “You may see signs of beaver: fallen or gnawed trees. Deer are common, and if you’re lucky you may spot a coyote.”
The trail creates a natural pipeline maximizing wildlife diversity. As nature writer David Quammen points out in his essays about “island ecology,” it’s not enough to merely preserve isolated wild spots. These become outdoor zoos, desert islands in which species stagnate. Today’s conservationists understand that remaining wilderness areas must be connected by uninterrupted corridors, like the Des Plaines River Trail. Even though the trail is fairly narrow, wildlife can move freely along it, intermixing, breeding, preserving genetic health and the continuation of their species.
“The Des Plaines River Trail is vital to our wildlife. It links all these different forest preserves, allowing seeds and animals to move freely” Surroz says. “Salamanders don’t have to cross highways.”
When the Des Plaines River Trail is completed, salamanders won’t have to cross highways even if they want to leave the county–or the state. (Salamanders never take such trips, often living out their lives within an acre. Still, if a salamander wanted to . . .)
The Des Plaines River Trail is our connection to a national network of main trails, tributary trails, branching, forking and interwoven trails that is growing like the veins in a leaf.
One visionary system we may be linked into is the Canada-to-Florida Tecumseh Trail. It’s still in the idea stage and, according to Fenelon, “Chances of it happening seem to have dimmed recently. But the idea is popular with Lake County’s equestrians. Did you know we have more horses per capita than any other county in America except in Kentucky? Also, bicycle groups might work to promote building the trail.”
If it happens, the Tecumseh Trail would run from Ontario through the Chippewa National Forest in Minnesota, the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin, our own Des Plaines River Trail through Cook County and into the Vermilion River and Nebo Ridge Wilderness Trails in Illinois and Indiana. Then it would go into Mammoth Cave National Park, the Cumberland Mountains, Georgia’s Cherokee, Chattahoochee and Okefenokee wild areas, and on to Florida’s Scenic Trail, ending in the Everglades.
Even if the Tecumseh Trail never makes it out of the planning stage, the Des Plaines River Trail is still destined to be hooked into two other major systems.
The first is the Grand Illinois Trail, a looping ellipse linking us with the Centennial Trail southwest of Chicago, winding through Joliet, then west to LaSalle-Peru, along the Alliance Trail to Moline on the Mississippi River, where it turns north to become the Great River Trail to Galena. From Galena it goes east, linking with the Pecatonica Prairie Path into Rockford, then onto the Long Prairie Trail to McHenry County and back to where it all started.
(For information about the Grand Illinois Trail, contact the Illinois Department of Natural Resources at 524 S. 2nd St., Springfield, Ill. 62701, 217-782-7454.)
The second trail system we’ll be plugged into is the National Discovery Trail, in planning by the National Parks Service. It will span the heartland, running from the East to West Coasts using the southern stretch of the Grand Illinois Trail. The goal is to have this in place by the year 2000.
Meanwhile, here it is a Sunday in April. What are you doing after you finish reading the paper? Wherever you live in Lake County, you’re not far from the greenway and its trails. Why not consider Edward Abbey’s advice? “Go there. . . .”
