Nearly 600 Acres in Campton Hills Park to be Locally Protected

In what St. Charles Park District Director Jim Breen calls "the biggest conveyance in state history without compensation," an extraordinary bill passed by the General Assembly and signed by Illinois Governor Ryan in February has transferred nearly 600 acres to the SCPD and the cities of St. Charles and Geneva. The transferred land, along Route 38, west of Randall Road, is adjacent to the state's medium security youth center.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a group of spirited Kane County citizens raised funds to donate several hundred acres of farmland to the State of Illinois for a home for truant boys. However, the Department of Corrections left much of the land untouched. Long coveted for development, the land may have a greener future with its new stewards.

In the early 1970s, the park district began leasing land surrounding the youth center and developed the multi-use, 345-acre park (see our profile, Winter 2001), investing two million dollars for recreation and restoration. The real treasure of Campton Hills lies in its many acres of rolling post-glacial terrain that includes an extended kamic ridge, seeps, sedge meadow, marshes, fens, savanna and a rare dry hill prairie.

Geneva will add 144.8 acres to 340 acres of property acquired with 1997 referendum funds to establish the Prairie Green Preserve Watershed Management Demonstration Project. This flood control project, expected to begin by 2004, will demonstrate the use of plant biofilters to cleanse urban surface runoff. Seventy-five upland acres have already been seeded with prairie plants.

The Department of Corrections, the park district, the cities oaf Geneva and St. Charles, and the adjacent Garfield Farm holdings total more than one thousand protected acres along Route 38. — Elizabeth Riotto