Not just ‘this thing that you dye green and you drive over’: Nonprofit hopes to connect residents with Chicago River’s wild side
Chicago is well-known for its greatest feat of water-based civil engineering: the reversal, in 1900, of the Chicago River to protect the city’s residents from waterborne disease.
Chicago’s waterways — and the people who shaped them — built the city. But more than a century later, that industrial history continues to color public perspectives of the city’s lake and river.
The conception of the Chicago River as something purely industrial or even unclean is something that nonprofit Urban Rivers hopes to challenge with a project called the Wild Mile: an ambitious plan to construct a mile-long walkway on the North Branch of the river. Though construction had been delayed by a global dock float shortage, Urban Rivers now hopes to complete the first 400-foot section of the walkway in mid-September. It’ll be accessible from a dock behind the REI on West Eastman Street.
“I think in the past, people saw the river as kind of blight of sorts,” said Nick Wesley, a co-founder and director of Urban Rivers. “Like it’s this thing that you dye green and you drive over, and you don’t actually swim in it, you don’t actually recreate in it, it’s just kind of there.”
That view is starting to change, Wesley said. Downtown, the Riverwalk draws Chicagoans and tourists alike to the river with dining, kayaking, boat tours and views.
If the Riverwalk is a place to sit back with an IPA, the North Branch is a place to watch the geese bully the ducks, examine a tree trunk that’s been stripped by a beaver or admire the migrating birds that settle in for a week or so during their winter journey south. Last winter, a bald eagle made an appearance at the North Avenue Turning Basin. “That would’ve been something in 1990 that would’ve been unheard of,” said Phil Nicodemus, Urban Rivers director of research.
“The Wild Mile is a wildlife first space,” said Jaclyn Wegner, director of conservation action at Shedd Aquarium, a partner of Urban Rivers on the project.
The Wild Mile is located on the North Branch Canal, a human-made portion of the river to the east of Goose Island, dredged under the direction of Chicago’s first mayor, William Ogden. The canal was dug to create a water highway of sorts for industrial barges, Wegner said. Steel sea walls, helpful for ship passages but harmful to wildlife habitats, still line the river here.
No longer host to larger boat traffic, the North Branch Canal makes an ideal setting for the Wild Mile, Wegner said. But the Wild Mile coalition hopes its work here can be replicated elsewhere on the river. Wegner said they were looking at areas on the South Branch of the river — creeks or canals that are protected from industrial barges — that are well-suited to support conservation work as well.
The Wild Mile project is a long-term one. Urban Rivers hopes that, eventually, the river walkway will line the entire east side of Goose Island, and that a classroom area and other installations such as river overlooks and picnic seating are added.
The first portion of the walkway will be funded by the city, via Open Space Impact Fees, and by Shedd Aquarium.
The idea is to work with the industrial confines of the river, trying to make the steel walls work for the area’s plants and animals, rather than against them. To that effect, the walkway will be lined by floating plant beds, many of which Urban Rivers, its partners and volunteers have already planted and attached to the rivers’ industrial sea walls.
The floating beds, which are planted on land, then taken out onto the river via boat, feature thousands of native Illinois plants: red cardinalis, milkweed, pink hibiscus. Wesley’s favorite flower, the pink Queen of the Prairie, bears a resemblance to a cone of cotton candy. Peter Nagle of the Chicago Botanic Garden selects the plants with an eye to the ecosystem: Which plants will nurture pollinators? Which have large root systems that can support fish populations?
On a hot Monday morning in July, a can of Budweiser bobbed upside down in the water.
“The beer of choice for people who throw beers in the river,” Wesley said.
Urban Rivers maintains a roster of volunteers who pick up river litter via kayak. On a recent Monday, Jill Byrne and Tammie Johansen were out on the water. Between the two of them and their many days on the river, they’ve picked up, among other things, a yoga mat, election signs, children’s toys and a pair of matching socks found in different areas of the river.
But despite some litter, the water quality in this portion of the river is fairly good, said Wesley and Nicodemus. Swimming in the river is dangerous because of its physical characteristics, like the sea walls, but generally not because the water itself is too dirty.
Fish populations have rebounded. When population monitoring began in the river in the 1970s, about 10 fish species were found. Now, there are 60 to 70.
Urban Rivers and Shedd Aquarium are conducting scientific studies related to the health of the North Branch ecosystem. They’re monitoring nitrates and oxygen in the water, including the effects of the floating planters; tracking pollinators and fish; experimenting with water-filtering mussels. Urban Rivers hopes to teach the public about the impacts of the Wild Mile on the river’s ecosystem.
Johansen drew attention to the chorus of bird songs overhead. “This is the city of Chicago,” she said. “These are the sounds that are pretty incredible, that we miss or that people don’t hone in on.”
While cruising the rivers’ garden beds, a kayaker slowed down alongside the boat Wesley and a Tribune writer and photographer were in. “Are these floating islands?” she asked. “Who planted them?”
Wesley explained that Urban Rivers had planted the islands, and that they contained about 12,000 native Illinois and prairie plants. The goal is to help bring the ecosystem back, he said.
“That’s awesome,” the kayaker replied, and then she was on her way.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the date the Chicago River was fully reversed. It was 1900.
