Into the Wild

Kloempken Prairie

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Cook County

IT DOESN’T TAKE LONG for modern-day trailblazers to see that there’s more than prairie at Kloempken Prairie in Des Plaines, Illinois

Heading off in any direction from Parking Lot C at Oakton Community College, visitors come face to face with a number of diverse communities — maple forest, sedge meadows, prairie, wetlands, and oak woods.

South from the parking lot, look through the swamp white oak flatwoods for a well-lit clearing. A short walk lands visitors in the preserve’s most diverse prairie patch, full of sawtooth sunflower, blazing star, and compass plant.

Historically, the preserve was savanna — prairie interspersed with stands of oak and hickory. Farmers cleared and plowed most of the land for crops during the 1800s. In the 1940s, the Forest Preserve District of Cook County purchased the site.

Hard work and the reintroduction of fire through controlled burns have brought Kloempken Prairie to its current condition. Restoration began in the late 1980s. Since the 1990s, volunteers with the Des Plaines River Valley Restoration Project have worked to expand several patches of prairie. Today they actively manage about 60 acres.

Restoration has uncovered hidden treasures. Three years ago, crews clearing buckthorn from the flatwoods near the preserve entrance found high-quality sedges and swamp black ash growing with the swamp white oak.

In the center of the preserve, beautiful Carle Woods has sugar maples, hackberries, white and red oaks (some at least 200 years old), and musclewood.

“There are very few places where I’ve seen musclewood, and there are quite a few of them here,” says preserve steward Bob Hostettler. “The bark is sinewy, interesting.”

Just to the west of Carle Woods, the area becomes Oakton property. But restoration does not stop at the forest preserve boundaries. Blending seamlessly with the Kloempken effort, Oakton students and staff have restored roughly 55 acres on the adjacent campus, including a former landfill.

According to Ken Schaefer, the naturalist and groundskeeper at Oakton who has worked on restoration at the college since 1991, the landfill sank several years ago and water began collecting. Wetland and wet prairie plants started growing. The area has become home to sora, killdeer, snakes, frogs, toads, and other fauna.

Across College Drive, visitors will come upon upland woods along the Des Plaines River — a peaceful place to watch great blue herons make low passes. Oaks thrive here, particularly with the reintroduction of fire. In the summer, the dappled sunlight peeks through the trees and gives this area a calming sense of otherworldliness.

Hostettler recommends visiting Kloempken Prairie during the weekend, since Parking Lot C, which provides easiest access to the preserve, is reserved for college staff during the week. A few spaces, on College Drive just north of Golf Road, are open all week.

— Deborah Kadin