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player ready...An area near Midwest Road and Kimberly Circle in Oak Brook remained cordoned off Tuesday afternoon after a DuPage County road crew unearthed what appeared to be five old gravesites.
The crew was excavating Midwest just south of the East-West Tollway on Monday to put in a retaining wall for a wider road when they uncovered five wooden caskets with human skeletal remains, DuPage County spokeswoman Rena Mack said.
“The discovery doesn’t affect our work on the road, but we cannot continue with the retaining wall until somebody figures out what needs to be done with the gravesites,” Mack said. “Potentially, there are more graves there.”
Mack said the DuPage County coroner, the Oak Brook Historical Society and an area archeological group are looking into the matter. As of Tuesday afternoon, no decision had been made on the disposition of the remains.
Mack said no foul play was suspected. “We are assuming there was an old cemetery there at one time,” Mack said. “Apparently at some time, it was moved to a new location, and the guess is that all of the gravesites didn’t get moved.”
George Mueller, an Oak Brook Zoning Board member whose family has lived in the area since 1872, said an old cemetery with weathered tombstones once stood on the land where the graves were found.
“The cemetery dated back to the 1800s, at least,” Mueller said. “When Paul Butler developed Brook Forest subdivision in that area, supposedly the bodies were removed to a private cemetery he had on Madison Street in Oak Brook.
“Apparently they just didn’t find all of the bodies. Some of the graves may not have had tombstones.”
Elsewhere in Oak Brook, a stretch of 31st Street was reopened Tuesday afternoon after being closed for a full day because of a leaking gas main near the Salt Creek Bridge.
A 56-year-old gas main sprang a leak Monday afternoon and the street was closed from York Road to Spring Road while emergency crews worked in volatile conditions to shut the pipe.
The street was re-opened after workers installed a valve in the pipe several feet above the leak, then used the valve to shut off the flow of gas. “It’s a very intricate process,” Oak Brook Fire Capt. Robert Morton said. “It’s very dangerous.”
Morton said the Fire Department began getting calls from residents reporting a gas smell about 1:30 p.m. Monday. Firefighters discovered a small leak in a deteriorating 12-inch pipe that runs along a bridge crossing Salt Creek.
Workers began installing the valve, called a “hot tap,” on Monday night. They returned Tuesday morning, drilling a hole into the pipe to insert the valve as firefighters stood by in case the gas ignited.
Morton said the pipe, constructed in 1945, was scheduled to be replaced soon as part of a road-widening project.
“It would have been changed out anyway,” Morton said. “It just happened a little earlier than anticipated.”