Directly ahead, about 200 yards downstream, the great blue heron perched on a rock and spread its mighty wings into the face of the early morning sun, which was already hot.
Only the dip of paddles and the quiet wake of canoes broke the stillness along a river bank perfumed by a flowering basswood.
On the opposite bank, wild roses–eight different shades of pink–bloomed near trees toppled by beavers and uprooted by flooding near the mouth of a creek.
Almost directly overhead, a broad-winged hawk circled high in a graceful glide.
“It’s a beautiful river,” said Don Mueggenborg, a retired Lemont High School counselor who, like the heron, cormorant and hundreds of other species, has made it his playground. “Sometimes if you’re out canoeing at dusk, you can hear and actually feel the ripple of a beaver slapping its tail.”
Mueggenborg wasn’t talking about one of those cool, idyllic streams pictured on the covers of slick canoe guides to the best rivers in southern Wisconsin. He was traveling a lower stretch of the historic but unheralded Des Plaines, flowing southwest just downstream from Willow Springs where Flagg Creek enters as a tributary below the old Santa Fe Speedway.
Nearly 325 years ago, Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette became the first Europeans to travel and record this water trail as a shortcut between Lake Michigan and the trading centers of the East. The birth of Chicago, then situated on swamp, became inevitable.
The Des Plaines was a marvelous river then, providing bountiful fish and fresh water that was used as recently as the 1870s to brew a local beer in Riverside.
But its once twisting course through the river valley was channelized wherever it interfered with the construction of the Sanitary & Ship Canal, which carries the treated waste of millions of people as it parallels the Des Plaines in the southwest suburbs. Construction of the canal, completed in 1900, has made some stretches of the river look as straight as the edges on a carpenter’s square.
And the Des Plaines’ water is murky from a muddy bed and silt stirred up by bottom-eating fish. Also contributing are the many industrial and community discharges still allowed by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency along its 156-mile course from Wisconsin through four Illinois counties.
But the perception of the river as a dirty industrial conduit is not totally deserved. Nature has fought back. Foliage has returned to the river’s bank, wildlife to its flood plain and fish to its waters.
Illinois fishery officials say walleye, bass and desirable panfish are caught from Lyons to Lockport. And unlike catches from Lake Michigan, there are no health consumption advisories on eating the fish, except those caught downstream from Lockport after the Sanitary & Ship Canal empties into it.
Upstream from Lockport, the Des Plaines is a quiet, peaceful oasis. Much of its north bank is forest preserve held by the Cook County or Will County Forest Preserve District, as well as wetlands and wildlife refuges. And a paddler can see scores of nests in tall trees just downstream from Lemont Road, which marks a rookery for the once-threatened great blue heron. If the wind is right, curious paddlers can even hear the cackles of the young herons.
The river bottom around Lemont is of the same limestone base that marks the surrounding area and was used to construct Chicago’s Water Tower.
Much of the south bank is wooded as well, and the land is owned by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. An industrial area through Lemont, leased from the MWRD along the Sanitary & Ship Canal, is shielded by foliage along the Des Plaines River while wildlife plays just across the stream.
“It’s really remarkable that this kind of wildlife can co-exist just yards apart from an industrial strip,” said Ralph Frese, the 70-year-old patriarch of Chicago area canoeists who has battled consistently to improve water trails in northeastern Illinois. “Who would think Sears Tower is just 12 miles behind and this industrial giant is all around us?”
For Mueggenborg and his canoeing buddies, the beauty of the river is their little secret. Three or four times a week, they paddle the seven miles upstream from Lemont to Willow Springs, turn around and head home–even in winter.
“If the water is soft, if it hasn’t frozen up, we’ll try,” said Dave Andersen, who said he moved from Midlothian to Lemont just to be closer to the river.
“It’s pretty bleak in the winter when all the leaves are off, but the river always surprises you,” said Andersen, who also carves and paints his own canoe paddles from the same materials the Native Americans used when Marquette and Joliet made their way here. “If you’re into wildlife, the river is beautiful. I enjoy seeing the deer, the beaver, the muskrat, the mink, raccoons.
“They all use the river. Just like me.”
Few canoeists outside Mueggenborg’s circle take advantage of the rich scenery and solitude the river affords. For example, Ron Urick used this stretch of the river to train for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul when he made the U.S. canoe and kayak team.
There are few casual canoeists.
The North Branch of the Chicago River, the east and west branches of the DuPage, the scenic Fox from Sheridan to Wedron are far more popular canoe routes than the lower Des Plaines.
The upper Des Plaines is also favored, buoyed by an annual canoe race founded by Frese and co-sponsored by the Cook County Forest Preserve District.
But during a recent six-hour paddle from Willow Springs to historic Isle a la Cache Museum in Romeoville, not one other canoeist was seen. Only two fishermen were seen wetting lines beneath the bridge at Lemont Road.
“There is quite a perception problem,” said Wally Matsunaga of the Illinois EPA’s Bureau of Water. “Because it’s an urban waterway, people automatically associate problems with it that are not necessarily true.”
“There are not a lot of paddlers,” said Mueggenborg, who has been canoeing the Des Plaines regularly since 1963. “It’s kind of a forgotten area. It doesn’t get the publicity that the Chicago River, the Fox River, the DuPage and the upper Des Plaines get.
“It’s kind of a quiet little river.”
“A lot of people who don’t do a lot of canoeing are not really aware of this part of the Des Plaines,” agreed Andy Talley, former museum coordinator at Isle a la Cache, which features exhibits and displays about the French voyageurs who plied their fur trade through these waters. “There’s a good possibility you’ll be the only one on the river–which is nice.”
The most recent report on the Des Plaines’ health gave it higher grades for water quality than in previous years. Twenty-five years ago, it was rated “poor” by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, its waters supporting few fish other than scavengers like carp and bullhead. Now its waters are rated “fair,” superior by some IEPA measurements to the North Branch of the Chicago River, a very popular canoe route, and comparable to the East and West branches of the DuPage River, Matsunaga said. Improved sewage treatment plants, better monitoring by the IEPA and construction of the MWRD’s Deep Tunnel, which carries away some storm and sewage overflows, have gradually aided the river.
“It still has a way to go as far as recovery, but it has come a long, long way,” said Steve Pescitelli, stream project manager of the division of fisheries of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. “We sampled the waters in 1995 and confirmed observations by local fisherman and found quite a high density of walleye, and bluegill and crappie below the Hoffman Dam at Lyons.”
The Division of Fisheries has already redoubled stocking efforts. “In 1995 and 1996 we stocked some smallmouth bass, and this year we stocked some two million sauger fry, which are closely related to the walleye but are more tolerant of various conditions and spawn in shallower water,” Pescitelli said.
“For sure, the river is underutilized. It goes back to the way we always regarded our rivers–as places to dump things and get rid of things. People still have the attitude that rivers are polluted and not worth fishing or canoeing, but I think that is slowly changing as cities and towns build riverwalks and the river becomes a focus again.”
GETTING THERE
The lower Des Plaines River is a rewarding but not an easy paddle for the casual canoeist. Like most of the 3,000 miles of interconnected rivers, streams, creeks and Lake Michigan shoreline in northeastern Illinois, it suffers from a lack of legally accessible and convenient put-in and takeout points and developed rest areas along the route.
Just upstream from Lemont, the river opens wide into a mini-lake, an area that was dredged for fill in Lake Michigan to create Lincoln Park. Headwinds can be brisk, making paddling an exercise.
The paddle from Columbia Woods in Willow Springs to Isle a la Cache is about 16 miles and takes from 5 1/2 to 7 hours. On such a trip, natural stopping points for lunch, rest or a snack would be around Illinois Highway 83 and at Lemont Road. But there currently are no convenient rest areas along the route; paddlers who stop may be trespassing.
The Cook County Forest Preserve District maintains an improved water access point amid its picnic ground in Columbia Woods; the Will County Forest Preserve District maintains a floating pier landing at Isle a la Cache, which was mentioned by Jacques Marquette in his writings and is believed to have been a campground for the priest/explorer and Louis Joliet. The grounds, which were used by voyageurs to stash their furs, are excellent for picnicking, and the museum provides another sidelight at the end of a paddle.
The Cook County Forest Preserve District distributes a canoe map of the Des Plaines along what it calls the Chicago Portage Canoe Trail. That trail begins 7 1/2 miles upstream from Willow Springs at Stony Ford, where the district also maintains an improved canoe landing amid picnic grounds.
The Chicago Portage is named after an effort by Joliet and Marquette who, on their way back up the Mississippi, paddled up the Illinois River and into the Des Plaines. They portaged through ancient Mud Lake, about where Harlem Avenue is, all the way into what is now the South Branch of the Chicago River around Kedzie Avenue and then into Lake Michigan.
Today, the Chicago Portage is memorialized with a sculpture and park at 48th Street and Harlem Avenue, near Stony Ford.
In its pamphlet touting the Chicago Portage Canoe Trail, the Cook County Forest Preserve District highlights a supposed canoe landing and rest area just west of Lemont Road on the north bank, but there is none. Plans for a canoe landing and parking area were scrapped when the Black Partridge Forest Preserve was designated a wildlife refuge. The decision seems somewhat incongruous; heavy truck traffic rumbles by on nearby Lemont Road and an adjacent frontage road, yet the heron, egrets and other waterfowl are abundant in the refuge.
The lack of designated access points and picnic areas make it a long trip from Willow Springs to Isle a la Cache. Lemont Road marks a convenient put-in or takeout point, but because of the lack of officially designated areas there is a risk of trespass.
“You need two kinds of facilities along a water trail,” said Kent Taylor, associate greenways director for the Openlands Project, an environmental advocacy and planning agency. “You need facilities that help people feel safe and help them enjoy the experience of what a water trail is all about.
“The Des Plaines is a fairly historic area. Knowing the history of the fur trade, knowing how Lincoln Park was created out of a hole in the Des Plaines, all of this enhances the experience. But there should be facilities and they should be well-marked and accessible.”
To help water trails like the lower Des Plaines, the Openlands Project in partnership with the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission and the Illinois Paddling Council has begun to develop a Water Trails Plan for northeastern Illinois.
It will include working with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources as well as local governmental agencies such as the Cook County Forest Preserve District to identify and improve water trails while supporting habitat protection and water quality improvements.
“People care most for things they know best,” Taylor said, “and our region’s creeks and rivers right now are among our least known treasures.”
Like the lower Des Plaines.
———-
For those wishing to canoe the river, detailed information is available from Don Mueggenborg at 630-257-1091.
