According to an app on my my iPhone, I took 18,594 steps today at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, totaling 6.7 miles. In truth, I went much farther than that. As I strolled through recovering prairie lands, I traveled back in time–through 1945 and the arsenal era, through the pioneer farmer era of the 1800s, all the way back to the time of the last glacier and beyond.
In spite of the unseasonable, 70 degree temperature, the prairie doesn’t look like much in mid-February. It’s understandable how most people driving along historic Route 66, which runs through the middle of Midewin, are likely to perceive nothing more than dead weeds.
Oh, but before the prairie wakes is a perfect time to dive deeper into the history of Midewin. The dry, matted grasses make it easier to climb the steep slopes of munitions bunkers. This provides a bird’s eye view of the Joliet arsenal era. During the 1940s, hundreds of bunkers on the west side of Midewin harbored massive amounts of TNT and its component chemicals, while even more bunkers on the east side of Midewin held the end products–bullets and bombs that were shipped overseas in support of Allied troops fighting the Good War.
Before trees and shrubs leaf out, the remains of various pioneer homesteads are easier to spy. They lie tucked within overgrown copses–originally planted, no doubt, to provide the earliest settlers some protection from the prairie sun and winds. When the government forced the farmers to sell their land in order to build the arsenal, all the farm structures were either moved or razed, leaving nothing but their limestone foundation bones–memorial relicts, really, of those who first busted the prairie sod as far back as the 1830s.
Amid yet other leafless copses lie mounds of other kinds of stones. These are reflective of the pioneer settler era as well as the Pleistocene Epoch. In the process of plowing up the prairie, pioneer farmers found they also needed to clear their fields of massive granite boulders. Known as glacial erratics, these boulders were left behind by the mile-thick glaciers that last blanketed northeastern Illinois about 14,000 years ago.
As it turns out, placing your hand on a sun-warmed rock from so long ago pales in comparison to hearing the clarion call of a sandhill crane, which speaks to Midewin’s even more distant past as well as its future.
The oldest sandhill crane fossil dates back 2.5 million years ago. Once threatened with extinction due to hunting and habitat loss, sandhill cranes continue to make a comeback. Over the past few years, as more and more of Midewin has been restored, flocks of sandhills–or sandies–have been regular visitors to Midewin, stopping over on their migration from Florida to Wisconsin and the upper midwest.
During this time,there has been a pair or two of sandhills that hangs around Midewin throughout the breeding season. No one yet has found a nest, but expectations are that it’s just a matter of time before this largest and most ancient of North American birds raises young again amid the “dead weeds,” better known as hundreds of species of native prairie grasses and flowers, at Midewin.
What a special place. Thanks for sharing. I just logged about 6 miles yesterday myself. It was awesome.