As the 20th Century commenced, the Fox River sank to low levels, and foul smells permeated its banks.
Elgin Mayor Arwin Price in the summer of 1900 declared the river “the natural sewer created by Almighty God for that purpose and that purpose alone,” according to an exhibit at the Geneva History Center.
Much has changed in 100 years, with the river now viewed as a scenic amenity, particularly in the Tri-Cities. But the transformation was slow and has yet to be completed.
Author Glenn Sandford, in a recent book about the river’s industrial use in Kane County from 1830 to 1915, wrote that during the summer the river was considered “a dirty, evil-smelling waterway near the cities.”
“The idea was to focus on the river as a resource for power for mills and stuff like that, and it followed that industry was centralized on the river,” noted Dick Untch, Geneva’s planning director.
During the Jazz Age in St. Charles, the Fox River’s banks sprouted tourism, leading to a new appreciation for the river’s beauty. But even after World War II, the view of the river as an industrial resource and waste hauler had not changed much in Batavia and Geneva.
“It smelled funny, and the only thing that was appealing about it is that we weren’t allowed to go near it,” said Nancy Bell, 49, remembering the river during her childhood in Geneva.
She recalled industry that lined the west bank, limiting access for those who did not live right on the river, and she remembered seeing dead turtles and fish when she snuck down to the river against her mother’s wishes.
Dennis Kintop, 41, who grew up in Batavia, has similar memories.
“We pretty much stayed out of the river,” he said. “It was kind of icky. It really wasn’t very good fishing. Everything was dead.”
That all began to change as Baby Boomers began to come of age. In 1969, a much publicized effort was launched to protect the river from those polluting it. Federal water pollution control legislation was enacted in the 1970s.
In 1981, work began on the Fox River Bicycle Trail along the river, an idea championed in Kane County by political leader and Batavia riverfront resident Phil Elfstrom.
Fox Valley residents began to view the river as an amenity to be protected, faced and enjoyed, rather than a conduit for power and waste best hidden behind industrial buildings.
Now, at the onset of the 21st Century, very little industry abuts the Fox River in the Tri-Cities. Most of the land along the banks is publicly owned. New housing developments overlook the river.
Fishing and boating are popular, as are bicycling, walking and many other activities. On weekends, the river draws residents from all over the booming region, often to festivals held in each of the Tri-Cities.
“There are just hundreds of people who are on the river every day,” said Mary Zaander of Geneva, who is leading efforts in her city to create RiverPark on land once slated for part of a condominium development.
“I think the whole mind-set has changed dramatically from the time I was growing up until what it is today,” Bell said. “There is a lot more focus on the river’s environment and as an amenity. People walk, bike and fish on it.”
Bell and her husband, Pat, who grew up in St. Charles, moved back to the Tri-Cities in 1986 after living in Massachusetts for 13 years. A trip back to the area and a gander at new bike paths, flowers and other river amenities “convinced us to move back here,” Bell said.
Kintop, the volunteer general contractor for the eight-year effort to build the Batavia Riverwalk that was completed in late 1998, said the Fox and the bike path did a lot to make people reconsider the river.
“You’re 10 feet away from it now,” he said. “Before, it was out of sight, out of mind.”
But he added that it took lots of toil and effort, for perhaps nearly 100 years, to make the river cleaner and transform its nature. He noted that in 1901 a Kane County grand jury handed up an indictment against the Pope Glucose Factory for dumping contaminants in the river after residents complained.
Carla Hill, director of the Batavia Depot Museum, which focuses on local history, said there was also some degree of recreation on the river. A 1958 painting by John Falter that appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post showed ice skaters on Depot Pond.
But she noted that the river in Batavia, now mostly publicly owned, once was the former site of three windmill factories and a foundry. “They all needed the river for cooling, for power,” she said.
Perhaps the town along the river with the longest history of using it as an amenity is St. Charles.
Though there were eight mills, foundries and factories downtown along the river by 1896, river-edge development changed between 1920 and 1940, when the Hotel Baker and Arcada Theatre were built. The city became a resort town, attracting the likes of band leaders Louis Armstrong and Tommy Dorsey.
Even before that era, in 1911, Pottawatomie Park was established. It had a riverfront beach and golf course and cottages north of North Avenue.
Barbara Anderson–who has lived in a home in Pottawatomie Park for 54 years and, along with her husband, Chester, has operated a paddle boat excursion company since 1945–remembers horses being used to clear the ice for skating on the river.
“The river, really, hasn’t changed much, except that it’s a lot cleaner,” she said.
She recalled her mother, who lived in Chicago, telling her about going to St. Charles to swim in the river.
“She remembered pushing the scum away to swim, and we don’t have to do that now,” Anderson said, referring to frequent water skiers on the river today.
In addition to Pottawatomie Park, which long has had a swimming pool and miniature golf course, Ferson Creek Park has a fishing pier and canoe launch, Boy Scout Island has a boat ramp and Mt. St. Mary Park has tennis courts, a rock garden, bicycle path and pavilion.
The St. Charles Park District plans to spend as much as $800,000 to rebuild an 1892 pavilion recently torn down in Pottawatomie Park, a small pavilion to the north, a footbridge linking the structures, a fountain plaza, a brick walkway, bike path and an 80-foot viewing tower.
Plans also are in the works to spend more than $4 million to extend a bike path under railroad tracks and over the river in St. Charles.
“We have continued to make the river more accessible and extend bike paths,” said Ellen Divita, St. Charles economic development director.
Divita also said other improvements to the riverfront could result from coming efforts to develop a downtown strategy and improve the city’s corridors, including the riverfront, by using hotel and motel tax revenues.
In addition to the Riverwalk in Batavia, there’s a canoe chute, a municipal pool off the river and plans to revitalize the downtown, partly by focusing on the river. A bicycle and pedestrian bridge over the Fox River was opened last September, and a circular plaza may soon be constructed at the west end of that bridge.
“It’s the focal point of the city,” Batavia Planning and Zoning Officer Rick Smeaton said of the river. “If you are down here on a Saturday or a Sunday, there are people just crammed here on the Riverwalk and the bike paths and the parks.
“Even in the winter, the pond portion of the river freezes over and the Park District goes down there and plows it over, and people use it for skating,” he added. “So it’s used 12 months out of the year.”
Geneva will have RiverPark to complement other amenities, such as a portage area near the dam, a public-access boat ramp, lots of open space courtesy of the Park and county Forest Preserve Districts, and a thriving downtown.
About two-thirds of the river’s shores in Geneva are publicly owned, said Untch, the Geneva planner, who said the city “is blessed with” open space facing the river, as well as scenic bluffs that overlook it.
Although most area residents welcome the new focus on the river, some are wary that the river will be loved to death. Development, if not carefully done, can funnel more polluted storm-water runoff into the river and result in more treated sewage being dumped in it.
“It’s both loved and abused,” said Eugene McArdle, an emeritus professor of biology at Northeastern Illinois University who lives on the Fox River at the northern border of St. Charles. “It’s an amenity that belongs to everyone in theory, but in practice, it can’t tolerate all that use.”
McArdle also noted greater use of power boats on the river as well as resistance to removing the South Batavia Dam, a proposal being studied by the Forest Preserve District. It would improve the river environment but lower its depths upstream.
Nevertheless, discussion about removing the dam, built in the early 1900s to cool a power plant, shows that attitudes clearly have changed.
Perhaps the greatest compliment to the river in all three cities is the recent effort by developers to build homes overlooking it, rather than industrial structures that back up to it.
Mac Airhart, founder of family-owned Airhart Construction Corp., fought for nearly five years to build a housing development on 55 acres in Geneva that once was the site of a state-run girls school. The Fox Run subdivision sits on a bluff just east of the Fox River, and from there one can scan the river and historic downtown on the west bank. Prices for homes there are to start at about $450,000.
He said the improved quality of the river’s water has changed people’s perceptions.
“When you pull out a crappie and it comes out with a tumor on its side, it’s kind of a turnoff,” he said, recalling one Fox River fishing expedition many years ago.
Also in Geneva, Sho-Deen Inc. is building North Riverfront condominiums near RiverPark. In Batavia, the 44-unit Quarry Stone Pond development has been proposed for a spot on Water Street adjacent to the river.
And in St. Charles, developer Sean Williams has proposed replacing the 1895 Piano Factory on an 8.5-acre riverfront site with a mixed-use development, including town homes, condominiums, shops and offices. Plans include improvements to the nearby riverwalk.
Without the efforts to protect the river and enhance its banks, the housing projects would never have been proposed, developers said. Airhart sounded more like an environmentalist than a builder on the subject, referring to the Fox River and stressing “the need to protect this great God-given amenity.”
