Summer 1998

Restored area is Midwest's largest breeding colony of endangered black-crowned night herons and home to prickly pear cactus, ancient beach ridges

Cook County, Illinois

Powderhorn Marsh and Prairie is a restorative find for the city-weary. Located in the Calumet region, straddling the city line between Chicago and Burnham, Powderhorn is a tallgrass complex that stands as testament to the indomitable spirit of nature.

Shallow marshes and wet prairies once filled the Chicago lakeplain behind the sand ridges and beaches along the edge of Lake Michigan. Potawatomi canoes once glided through the vast tallgrass prairie, savanna, wetland complex spanning roughly 22,500 acres across the Calumet region.

Then the industrial age arrived. Railroads, heavy industry, and neighborhoods replaced the original Calumet. Yet intermixed with it all remains one of the Midwest's most critical stopovers for migrating birds and one of the greatest concentrations of threatened and endangered species in Illinois.

Who'd expect this site to host the Midwest's largest breeding colony of state endangered black-crowned night herons? It's noted in the recent feasibility study by the National Park Service, which is considering the creation of a natural heritage area that would include Powderhorn and Calumet as a link between Indiana Dunes to the east and the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor to the west.

South of the parking lot is Powderhorn Lake, dug as a "borrow pit" for expressway fill, and now a popular fishing spot. North and east of the parking lot is a series of ancient beach ridges. Walk through the black oaks that run along the ridge tops and soon you'll find yourself in one of the finest complexes of savanna, prairie, and marsh anywhere. Blazing stars, asters, goldenrods, sunflowers, and towering grasses of the prairie form bands between the marsh grasses, rushes, cattails and orchids that teem in the swales. (Unfortunately rampant purple loosestrife is in the swales too.) Look for herons, egrets, moorhens, red-tailed hawks, Eastern bluebirds, Eastern meadowlarks, and gray catbirds, as well as a variety of waterfowl, such as blue-winged teal, mallard, and wood duck. In migration, a short-eared owl may pop into view. Mammals? If you're lucky, you may glimpse a coyote hunting the rare Franklin's ground squirrel.

Perhaps the most striking find for many first-time visitors is the prickly pear cactus, which thrives on the sandy ridge tops. At this point you may feel as if you've left the city behind. Powderhorn is proof that there is yet wilderness on the edges of the city of Chicago itself! For more information, call (708)868-0606.

— Sharon L Comstock