It was the first sunny day after what seemed like a weeklong rainstorm, though the weather wasn’t necessarily springy on the first day of April as Angela Hunt sat at a picnic table working on a bird craft.
“I wish it was a little sunnier and warmer,” she said.
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Still, it was good to get out and do something for spring break. Nearby, archery targets were set up beside the central pavilion at Sauk Trail Woods in South Chicago Heights. Behind her, near the slope leading down to Sauk Lake, an obstacle course had been created behind a table displaying bird nests, turtle shells and other natural artifacts that can be found amid the adjacent timber.
It was part of the Spring Breakout Adventure, a Forest Preserves of Cook County program designed to showcase the district’s outdoor recreation opportunities.
The program had never been hosted at Sauk Trail Woods. It gave Hunt, of Chicago Heights, an excuse to check out a giant natural area she’d often driven past and wondered about.
“I never knew how to get in here,” she said.
The entrance is off a little winding road between 26th Street and Sauk Trail that’s surrounded nearly entirely by forest preserve property. It’s called Forest Preserve Drive, and it bisects one of the district’s earliest land acquisitions.
According to information provided by the district, the bulk of the acreage that makes up Sauk Trail Woods was purchased in 1917 and 1918. Then called the Chicago Heights Preserve, it was “a thousand acres of incomparable scenery,” according to a catalog of preserve properties published by the district in 1918.
Thorn Creek and its tributaries had carved out a series of deep ravines through the area to create a bumpy, old-growth topography that distinguished the landscape from the surrounding flatland farms. It was, the catalog noted, “a vast region of woodland that one day will be a marvel among public park systems.”
One of the first measures to create that marvel was the 1923 installation of a dam and spillway where a new road connecting Chicago Heights with Western Avenue bridged Thorn Creek over a particularly deep ravine. The dam created Sauk Lake, as well as a brand new watery playground.
But it wasn’t for everyone.
The first volume of “The Chicago Recreation Survey,” published in 1937 by the Chicago Recreation Commission and Northwestern University, catalogs public open spaces and opportunities for play. A section details all of Cook County Forest Preserves and their facilities.
Sauk Trail Woods and Sauk Lake have five entries, and all of those access points and many of the amenities still exist. Sauk Trail Lake South, now appearing on maps as the Central Pavilion, was the flagship. It had two parking areas, a large stone shelter with two fireplaces, a drinking well and “sanitary conveniences,” and room for as many as 5,000 picnickers, according to the Survey. There was a concession stand, dressing rooms for those who wanted to swim off the sandy beach or jump from diving platforms. Others could head to the boathouse and rent a watercraft to paddle around.
But at the top of the book’s entry for Sauk Trail Lake South, in bold type, the Chicago Recreation Survey included the following caveat: “for white people only.” It is the only preserve so marked in that document from the ’30s, though an entry for one preserve just north of Thornton that offered 15 picnic tables and a baseball diamond indicates it was “for colored people only.”
Some 85 years after the Recreation Survey was published, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle stood at Sauk Trail Lake South amid the late February chill to announce the preserve was one of three areas where district officials will devote resources as part of the “Connecting People to Nature Challenge,” along with Miller Meadow in the west suburbs and Caldwell Woods and Bunker Hill on the North Side.
They’re places with “untapped potential,” Preckwinkle said, so the district plans to spend nearly $1 million combined at those preserves to spur use and community involvement.
It’s an effort that hearkens back to the early days of the preserve, when the boathouses were built and sandy beaches were developed on the new lake’s muddy shore.
Thorn Creek had other ideas, though, gradually filling the lake with silt that had nowhere to go thanks to the 26th Street dam. By 1959, long before the Clean Water Act, growing concern over pollution in Cook County made it “obvious that swimming in those waters controlled by the Forest Preserve District would have to be forbidden in the interest of public health,” according to a report by the district’s Advisory Committee issued that year.
The dressing rooms and diving platforms came down, and as the lake became shallower, the boat houses were dismantled too. The beach sand gradually washed away, and at some point the discriminatory designations were lifted.
With the lake about to mark its 100th birthday, district officials don’t want to repeat the past. Rather than excluding some visitors and drawing others by changing the nature of the land, they’re putting these new resources into restoration — making the woods more inviting by removing the dense understory of invasive, thorny shrubbery. Planned physical additions are more on the passive side, too, such as new signs and trail markers. And some of that investment will be used to encourage nearby community groups to use the preserve more and make a connection with the land.
It’s modeled, Preckwinkle said, after a pilot program at Beaubien Woods in Chicago’s South Side, where community groups have become enthusiastic users and promoters of the preserve.
District officials recently sought input on what people would like to see at Sauk Trail Woods at an open house in Park Forest. Jacqui Ulrich, the district’s director of Conservation and Experiential Programming, said about 25 people came to the meeting at Dining on the Green.
She said it was a good opportunity to start forming relationships with community leaders as the process gets underway, while also learning about what people use the preserve for now. It’s a good birding area, and though the fishing isn’t great because the lake now is only a few feet deep, people still enjoy having the lake there as a scenic element, she said. Its topography also makes it a good place to hike.
One of the concerns people brought up involved safety.
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“An active preserve is a safe preserve,” Ulrich said. “The more we get people involved in using the space in positive ways, the less negative behavior you’ll have.”
It’s part of a process she called “activating” the preserve — encouraging school groups, families and hikers to use the woods and enjoy the land, promoting the perception of a welcoming green space rather than an area to be wary of.
Two Fridays ago, the Spring Breakout Adventure at Sauk Trail Lake South drew about 10 visitors over the course of three hours, according to Jessica Becker, a district program specialist manning the craft table. It wasn’t a bad turnout, she said, for the event’s first time, and it gave at least two community members their first look at that particular land.
There’s some uncomfortable history at Sauk Trail Woods, but as Preckwinkle said when announcing the initiative, the natural beauty of the preserve makes it “a special place.”
And these days, everyone’s welcome to enjoy it.
Landmarks is a weekly column by Paul Eisenberg exploring the people, places and things that have left an indelible mark on the Southland. He can be reached at [email protected].