As early as 1888, Chicago-area residents were discussing the need to preserve the land near Zion that became Illinois Beach State Park.
Industry was encroaching from the south, sand mining was ravaging the dunes, and the surrounding countryside was being overridden by homesteads and farm pasture, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ website. In 1888, a Waukegan nurseryman named Robert Douglas discussed turning the area into a regional park with famous landscape architect Jens Jensen, whose legacy is reflected in the Chicago park system, Cook County forest preserves and Indiana Dunes.
Legislative efforts to save the area started in the 1920s, according to the DNR website, and in 1948 the state acquired the first parcels of what is now Illinois Beach State Park, a 61/2-mile stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline extending south from the Wisconsin state line.
Bob Feffer, assistant superintendent at the park who has worked there 28 years, estimated Illinois Beach State Park attracted 1.3 million visitors last year. In 2015, it was the fourth most visited state park in Illinois.
“The most popular (attraction), of course, is the beach,” Feffer said. “And then the nature preserve and the trails are nice.”
The beach is the only remaining beach ridge shoreline left in the state and includes dunes, swales, marshes and oak forests, the website says. More than 650 species of plants have been recorded in the dunes area.
The 4,160-acre park consists of a northern and a southern unit. The area south of Beach Road was dedicated in 1964 as the first Illinois nature preserve. And at the northern end of the park is a 1,500-slip marina with a boat launch and charter boats, Feffer said.
The park is home to the Camp Logan National Guard Rifle Range Historic District, a former Illinois National Guard training facility that operated from the late 1800s until the early 1970s. The state legislature in 1892 bought a 220-acre plot to train Illinois National Guard units stationed throughout Chicago, naming it after Gen. John Alexander Logan, a Civil War-era politician who raised a southern Illinois volunteer regiment in 1861, according to the DNR website. Forty more acres were added in 1899.
Soldiers at Camp Logan would shoot at targets at ranges spanning from 200 to 1,000 yards, oriented toward Lake Michigan. The camp often hosted shooting competitions that would attract marksmen from throughout Illinois and other Midwestern states. Today, 243 acres of Camp Logan is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Illinois Beach State Park also has picnic shelters; the Illinois Beach Resort and Conference Center; and trails for hiking and biking. There are five miles of trails in the southern part of the park, and the Camp Logan trail to the north is available to cross-country skiers. The 241 campground sites in the park’s southern area have electricity and access to showers and sanitary facilities, according to DNR’s website. Reservations are accepted between May 1 and Sept. 30.
The park hosts deer hunting in the fall and, beginning each spring, a pond in the park is stocked with fish.
Many of the visitors to the park are bird watchers, Feffer said.
“We’re on a major flyway for birds migrating north in the spring and south in the winter,” Feffer said. “We get everything from bald eagles, peregrine falcons to migrating monarch butterflies.”
Two sandhill cranes nest in the park, and visitors often see great horned owls, red-winged blackbirds and woodpeckers, Feffer said.
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There are eight full-time employees at the park in summer, Feffer said. The park is off of Sheridan Road near the border of Beach Park and Zion. There is an entrance on West Wadsworth Road.
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Illinois Beach State Park
1 Lake Front Drive, Zion
Hours: Sunrise to 8 p.m.
Cost: $1
Information: www.dnr.illinois.gov/Parks/Pages/AdelineJayGeo-KarisIllinoisBeach.aspx