Paul Mooring remembers helping tow away the refrigerators, cars and bathtubs that had been trashed on the abandoned railroad tracks that ran near his Glen Ellyn home in the 1960s.
Clearing the old railway line was the first step in creating the 62-mile Illinois Prairie Path, which runs today through Kane, Cook and DuPage counties. On Wednesday, DuPage County officials and longtime advocates kicked off the path’s 50th year with a countdown to its golden anniversary, including speakers talking about the path.
“When we started, it was just this abandoned railroad right of way,” Mooring said.
Mooring, 91, served as the path’s nonprofit board president for more than 20 years, and still sits on the panel with his wife, Jean, 86.
Today, the path is maintained cooperatively by DuPage County and municipalities, park districts, utility companies, forest preserves and volunteers. It sees about 20,000 uses each week, said Bob Sobie, president of the Illinois Prairie Path not-for-profit corporation.
A former naturalist at Lisle’s Morton Arboretum, the late May Theilgaard Watts, is credited with bringing the path to fruition. A letter to the editor she wrote to the Chicago Tribune in 1963, proposing a conversion of the abandoned railroad line into a nature path, is credited with starting a volunteer-driven movement to make it happen, according to information from DuPage County officials.
Jean Mooring said she remembers the day Watts visited her garden club in Glen Ellyn to recruit help for the path. She recalls overseeing the purchase of limestone to pave the trail.
The Moorings, who live about a mile away from the path in Glen Ellyn, still visit the trail to pick up garbage and empty a trash container that’s inaccessible to waste management workers, Jean Mooring said. They’re committed to the job, even if it means taking the trash to their own garbage can at home. The chore doesn’t faze the couple.
“We love to see people enjoying the prairie path whether on it or talking about it,” Jean Mooring said. “It’s a really fun thing for us. We love it.”
Some officials say the path helps attract and retain business in the communities it intersects, while bolstering the value of nearby homes.
“Basically the Prairie Path and the entire trail system is one of the amenities that enhances our quality of life here,” said DuPage County Board Member Grant Eckhoff, who represents Wheaton and Glen Ellyn, two communities along the path.
Sobie said supporters will mark next year’s anniversary with several celebration events, such as a trail cleanup day.
