Come November, there’s not much color left in a prairie. A last splash of yellow, perhaps, in a few lingering coreopsis petals or a stubborn spring of goldenrod. Nonetheless, on my first visit to Chicago Ridge Prairie , it’s easy to see that it is a special place, a well managed place, a well interpreted place.
To learn just how special, all you have to do is read the signs. Of the nearly 50 nature preserves I’ve visited this year, perhaps only Volo Bog rivals Chicago Ridge Prairie for interpretive signage. Already I knew that prairie remnants are rare in Illinois — of the estimated 22 million acres of prairie that once blanketed Illinois, only about 2,500 acres remain, mostly in small, isolated sites throughout the state. But from the signage I learned that Chicago Ridge Prairie — currently owned and managed by the Oak Lawn Park District — is among the rarest of the rare. It is one of only two gravel prairies remaining on the lake bed of ancient Lake Chicago. Its calcerous conditions support a distinct combination of about 150 prairie plants — many of them uncommon to rare.
I also learned from the signage that in the 1980s, about a third of the site was ruined by illegal dumping. That’s how we’ve lost so much of our natural land. For some, the last vestiges of our native prairies, wetlands and woodlands are not oases of biodiversity and beauty, they are merely convenient places to dump garbage. But in this instance, someone cared enough to undo the damage, to remove the equivalent of a thousand dump trucks of trash. Someone cared enough to use seeds gathered from the rest of the site to begin restoring the dump site back to its prairie glory. Someone cared enough to work with the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission to get the site dedicated in 1994 as an official Illinois Nature Preserve, providing permanent protection for the site.
I love learning about these hero stories. However, some mystery remains. How is it that this 11.7-acre prairie remnant survived at all? How come it didn’t get plowed up or developed long ago, like everything surrounding it in this inner ring suburb of Chicago?
That’s the story I’d love to learn about this and so many other nature preserves — how did they escape the plow, the developer? Who were the other heroes who first had a hand in protecting them? Who once owned the land, perhaps, and chose beauty over commerce? Or who signed petitions, or raised money to keep the site from falling victim to “progress.” Or maybe, as was the case with Gensburg-Markham Prairie, what was the planned development that failed, leading to preservation by neglect, until someone came along and gave these remnants of our shared ecological heritage the care and attention they so richly deserved?
I’ve put out a few feelers to learn more about Chicago Ridge Prairie. Perhaps by the time I visit next summer — when the prairie is in full bloom — I’ll know a little more, rendering my experience of the site richer still.
Today was a toss-up as to which was more fun — talking to folks about the George Fell biography or taking a guided tour of one of the natural areas that George protected first by buying it and then designating it as an Illinois Nature Preserve: 
This past March, Susan and I visited the site with Jerry Paulson, former executive director of NLI, who worked many years with George. We were too early see pasque flowers — one of the first bloomers on the gravel ridge prairie. And by the time I was able to return in July, the pasque flowers long since had gone to seed.
Fittingly, Liberty Prairie Reserve is anchored by 
So, too, am I OK with the fact that the main entrance to 
Susan and I recently enjoyed an Illinois Nature Preserve-alooza while getting a good workout. Pedaling our bikes along the Old Plank Road Trail, we cruised through Old Plank Road Prairie and Dewey Helmick Nature Preserves. The third site was the Butterfield Creek Headwaters Land and Water Reserve. A few weeks later, we returned to the trail and took the spur to Hickory Creek Barrens Nature Preserve.
It took more than 20 years to acquire the right of way, raise funds and overcome certain local opposition, but in 1997 the first segment of the Old Plank Road Trail was opened to the public. At the ribbon cutting in 1997, 
That same year, the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission named one of the two new nature preserves in his honor. Dewey Helmick Nature Preserve and Old Plank Road Nature Preserve are prototypical railroad prairies. They survived because they remained relatively untouched since the rails were laid more than a century and a half ago — aside from periodic fires set by sparks from passing trains. But that was a good thing, since prairies are dependent upon fire to keep their soils healthy and to keep invasive trees and shrubs from encroaching.
preserve. More than a quarter of it — 575 acres — was dedicated in 1998 as the 
The online history also tells how the other man for whom the site is partly named — Mel Hoff — was appointed the Volunteer Steward in 1982 and formed the West Chicago Prairie Stewardship Group. It took 24 years of sweat equity to remove invasive species, abandoned cars and all kinds of other debris. But eventually, the diverse site — containing freshwater marsh, mesic silt loam savanna, and at least three different kinds of prairie communities — returned to health and was designated as the Truitt Hoff Nature Preserve in 2006.
At the trailhead, the stewardship group had posted its most recent newsletter, that helped me better see and understand the site. Out in the field, I found brush piles, evidence of the clearing reported in the newsletter. I also encountered lusher grasses yet fewer wildflowers than anticipated, which the newsletter chalked up to a wet spring.
The grasses were so dense and lush, in fact, that they all but obscured the narrow footpaths, which reminded me of a question raised at the annual luncheon — about public access to nature preserves. I acknowledged that George Fell was more of a nature-for-nature’s-sake kind of guy. Whereas most of his Illinois Nature Preserves Commissioners preferred wider, more inviting trails to encourage people to explore nature, George was adamant that trails be kept to a minimum, and that visitors should walk single file, like the “Indians” used to do.
Following The Conservation Foundation annual luncheon, I headed out to visit three Nature Preserves in DuPage County. My first stop was 
The 65-acre Churchill Prairie Nature Preserve actually consists of a “complex patchwork” of different kinds of natural area community types, including a couple different kinds of prairie, sedge meadow, mesic upland forest, dry mesic upland forest and savanna.
Earlier in the day, at Truitt Hoff, I was blown away by the diversity of dragonflies patrolling the site. At Churchill Prairie, it was all about birds. Adult bluebirds and Baltimore orioles — flashing blue and bright orange against the green canopy of the savanna — were far too busy gathering insects to feed their nestlings for me to get a good picture. But a downy woodpecker was a little more cooperative.
I had a great time talking to supporters of 
Like several of the Nature Preserves I’ve visited thus far, Belmont Prairie survived by accident, or because someone hadn’t yet gotten around to developing it before it was “discovered.”
In my quest to visit 50 Illinois Nature Preserves this year, I could almost make the case for adding a whole bunch more to my list from having spent this past weekend at a single site: 
My fellow writers offered books on a wide range of subjects — from historic bridges to presidential biographies, from Maxwell Street to labor history. My good friend Rich Cahan and his 
Also there was Mike MacDonald, whose exquisitely handsome 
Mike features 28 nature preserves in his book, from 
According to Google Maps, the preserve was accessible via a frontage road to I-55. However, turning onto the road, I immediately came to a closed gate, beyond which lay an unpaved, overgrown two-track.
To most folks, speeding by on the highway, then and now, Grant Creek Nature Preserve — if noticed at all — probably seems a fallow farm field at best. A weed patch at worst, waiting for some better use to come along. But, according to the 
