A Morning Walk at Hadley Valley Preserve, Joliet, Illinois, USA. When you start the walk, the air is filled with the wonderful scent of wildflowers. It was early morning, 6:00 a.m. Central Standard Time, just 50 minutes southwest of Chicago, IL. Will County is known for preserving and protecting old forests and prairies. I actually know the story behind this prairie, since I grew up in Lockport, IL, which is on the NW corner of this prairie.
When I was a teenager, we used to ride our horses out to this farmland. It was a gravel or dirt road back in the day. My friend Flossy, who owned the horse farm next to me, allowed me to board my horse at her stable and accepted a barter in labour by cleaning stalls and feeding horses. She said she knew a haunted farm up the road; it would be a fun ride in the late afternoon. We rode to the farm (now known as Hadley Valley) and passed through a forest as we entered. All of a sudden, the wind inside the forest started howling, and the horses became spooked. I was spooked, the wind went from calm to 50-70 mph in seconds, and the tree branches were bending.
I later found out that the property was actually bought to stop the pesticides and fertiliser runoffs from entering a few streams on the property that flow into the Lockport water supply and were contaminating the water.
Will County bought the farm, land, and streams, and they began a restoration and reconstruction project to clean the land. They now grow grasses and plants that local farmers can harvest to feed their farm animals.
Hadley Valley protects a diversity of habitats, including forests, savannas, wetlands, and a portion of Spring Creek. Wildlife found at the preserve includes more than 15,000 species of insects, birds, aquatic invertebrates, fish, mammals, amphibians and reptiles. The preserve is also home to a variety of plant species, including tall swamp marigold, wahoo, great angelica, yellow avens and shingle oak. The preserve is also the location of the largDistrict’s in the District’s history — a stream de-channelisation, wetland restoration, and wildlife habitat restoration project spanning 500 acres of the preserve — performed in partnership with the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, Openlands, the U.S. ArmyO’Hare of Engineers, and the O’Hare Modernisation Program.
This project has won the following awards: the 2019 Excellence in Ecological Restoration Program accreditation from Chicago Wilderness, the 2010 Illinois Chapter American Planning Association Implementation Award, the 2009 Illinois Recreation Association Outstanding Conservation Project Award, and the 2008 Chicago Wilderness Excellence in Conservation Award.
