Chicago Nature Blog: West Branch: An Overview

Back in 2017, Aimee and I were more than ready for a change of scenery. We had been living in our house in Jefferson Park since 2010 (about the time I started this blog) and enjoyed life as dinks in our late twenties. A few years later came our dog Cassius, and a few years after that, our daughter Lumen. It became clear that while we truly loved our home and neighborhood, the changes in our lives would eventually lead to a relocation.

Yep, this is a pretty typical situation. City kids have babies, then move to the comfy suburbs where the houses all kind of look the same, block after block. I used to mock people that did that. And then we did it, and then...I wish I had done it sooner.

That's because we found a house that backs to over 700 acres of restored tallgrass prairie, wetlands (including a rare hanging fen), a river, and two lakes. It is called West Branch Forest Preserve. It provides for my young daughter something I never had as a child growing up in Chicago - a nature wonderland so large, the rolling knolls of big bluestem grass touch the sky without obstructions (in the right places). In the weeks leading to our move, I was ecstatic about the prospect of exploring this relatively vast and quiet preserve. What lived there? And what is the site's history?

Over the last seven years, I have spent quite a bit of time trying to answer these questions. I have learned a lot about "my" prairie, and yet there is a lot to learn. I decided to create a series of posts about my observations at West Branch as well as my historical research findings. Historic land use is key to understanding a natural area's "fitness". There are few natural areas in the Chicago region that haven't been lived on, farmed, grazed, logged, regraded, or mined. West Branch is a shining example - all of the above has happened there.

West Branch Forest Preserve (hereafter "West Branch") is located in Wayne Township in DuPage County. It is bordered roughly by Army Trail Road to the north, Fair Oaks Road to the east, Old Wayne Golf Club and a patch of McMansions to the south, and Klein Road to the west. Some other holdings are located adjacent to or near these boundaries. For example, the eastern section of some croplands west of Klein Road are owned by the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County (FPDDC). This land has not yet been managed as a natural area and of this writing is still leased to a farmer who alternates between growing corn and soybeans. Another area, disjunct from West Branch to the south, will be covered later on.

Most of the preserve is comprised of restored rolling tallgrass prairie. The northern portion contains two lakes - Deep Quarry Lake and Bass Lake. From between these two lakes a narrow, shallow river flows southward. It is the West Branch DuPage River, the preserve's namesake. The river quite neatly divides the preserve into two halves. The eastern half is the busy half. This is where the two parking lots are located. The main lot can hold over seventy vehicles and connects to an access point for canoes or kayaks to enter Deep Quarry Lake. A secondary lot to the south can accommodate nineteen vehicles. The West Branch DuPage River Trail cuts through the eastern half of the preserve. The path is crushed limestone and at times is heavily used.

There is no easy public access to the western half of West Branch, making it much quieter. This is the side I frequent most, because I can simply walk out of my yard and into the prairie in a matter of a minute or so. The western portion is a great place to explore, to quiet your mind, to find greater meaning. This probably wasn't the case fifty years ago, when the place was transitioning from farm fields to a shrubby, overgrown mess.