Nature Inquiries

by Carl Strang

This entry on the Civilian Conservation Corps  chapter of Fullersburg Forest Preserve history is more speculative than the others, hence the question mark in the title. These are relatively large scale changes in the landscape, and documentation I have been able to find is limited.

The first stop is the most certain. The camp itself was located on the site of the present day Hilltop Prairie, west of the parking lot and buildings.

I suspect that the camp extended north of the prairie proper onto more level ground. Below that prairie to the north is the Amphitheater, annual home of a stop on Fullersburg’s Halloween Nature Walks.

The Amphitheater’s location coincides with a symbol on the CCC’s 1937 map (oval shape in the center of the excerpted map piece below).

This symbol on a topographic map usually represents a “cut,” a place where earth was excavated. This suggests that the Amphitheater is an artifact, perhaps created by the CCC themselves. An old newspaper clipping in the Forest Preserve District files says that performers (a singer, Elsie Janis, specifically mentioned) came from time to time to entertain the workers in a theater. The Amphitheater bowl, located immediately below the camp, seems the likely location of this theater.

Bits of retaining wall, some of which have been buried by slumping or erosion, persist in and near the Amphitheater, and likely were installed by the CCC.

Channels creating Willow and Sycamore Islands, along with two smaller islands west and northwest from Willow Island, are supposed to have been dug by the CCC as well.

These islands do not appear on the original 1840 survey sketch or on the 1874 DuPage County atlas, but they are clear in the 1937 map

and the 1939 aerial photo.

Thanks to siltation the channels have narrowed greatly and become shallower since that time, the smaller islets now are attached to the mainland except in times of flood, and Sycamore Island is now Sycamore Peninsula except in high water. The bridges over Salt Creek at the Visitor Center and the western extremity of the preserve (i.e., Rainbow Bridge), as well as the bridges providing access to Willow and Sycamore Islands, bear the marks of CCC work, their construction involving use of the same kinds of dolomite slabs and beams as the Visitor Center and many of the trail shelters.