This aerial photo shows the original stream meanders in blue. Over the millennia the streams developed lazy meanders among the rolling kames, those gravelly hills deposited by glacial rivers.

[See also our line-drawn map (pdf, 252K) of current Nippersink Creek and nearby kames, in Exploring the Nippersink and Glacial Park.]

This photo shows the cultivated landscape. Settlers have removed trees, used gravel from the kames to fill the stream’s channel (though its skeleton remains visible), installed miles of drain tiles to make the fields tillable, and dug a straightened ditch to contain the waters of the Nippersink. This was the situation when the McHenry County Conservation District (MCCD) purchased this parcel in 1990 and when Ed Collins stood on a hill and looked at the river in 1986.