Lake Renwick's Many Lives: Gravel Quarry, Swimming Park, Bird Sanctuary

Plainfield’s first pioneers flocked to the area that is now Lake Renwick to establish the village's earliest community, Walker’s Grove.

That patch of prairie - named for Methodist minister Jesse Walker, who helped establish the settlement in 1828 - has morphed over the years from grassy plain to gravel quarry to spring-fed lake to summer retreat to bird sanctuary.

“Most of the people who come out here to see the birds have no idea the many different forms Lake Renwick has taken through its history,” said Greg Bluhm, a volunteer for the Will County Audubon Society.

In fact, it might not exist at all today had the Forest Preserve District of Will County not stepped in to prevent it from being turned into a residential development. The 320-acre site was purchased for $766,000 in 1989.

The Lake Renwick Heron Rookery Nature Preserve was declared a state nature reserve in 1992, protecting the breeding habitat for the five endangered or threatened species of birds that nest on islands in the center of the 200-acre lake.

The preserve is so valuable from an environmental standpoint that the Illinois Audubon Society has declared it "by far the most valuable rookery in all of Illinois ... a site of outstanding statewide significance."

Most of the preserve is open to the public in the spring and fall, but during the March-to-mid-August breeding season, you can only get in if you take a hike conducted by a forest preserve volunteer. Bluhm, a Channahon resident, leads tours, as does Tim Allison, of Goose Lake, taking people to banks of Lake Renwick to use “spotting scopes” to view the towering rookery.

There, they can see herons and egrets building nests, nurturing their young and foraging for food. It's the only place in the state where you can see great blue herons, great egrets, black-crowned night herons, double-crested cormorants and cattle egrets. During times of seasonal migration, you might see raptors, ducks and songbirds.

Last year Audubon Society counters logged about 4,000 birds, and they were flabbergasted three years ago when they found an alligator lurking amid the fowl.

“It’s a very sensitive environment, so we have to really limit traffic to give the birds the quiet they need during the 40 to 50 days they need until the baby birds are ready to leave the nest,” Allison said.

From prairie to pit to paradise

Interestingly, it was the invasion of the Joliet Gravel Co. that would ultimately lead to the nature preserve as it is today. In 1900 the company opened a rock quarry, mining 200 carloads of four grades of gravel on a daily basis.

Thirteen years later, it was purchased by the Chicago Gravel Co. to mine ballast for roads and train tracks. When steam shovels accidently hit a freshwater spring and flooded the quarry, a whole new realm of possibilities opened up.

While the company continued to mine the site, officials recognized the recreational advantages and Lake Renwick -- named for Frank Renwick, one of the founders of the Chicago Gravel Co. -- was born, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

The company stocked the lake with fish for anglers and started selling $3 season passes for swimmers. An elaborate complex was built, including beaches, a bath house, swimsuit rentals, pier and diving boards. During the Roaring '20s, a dance hall, which later became a skating rink, opened on the south side of the lake.

Old-timers may remember Powell’s Mill Restaurant, with its open-air porch that served as both dance floor and fishing dock and large Dutch windmill.

“Swimming weather awakens my Renwick Beach obsession,” patron Marion Sieben Mahoney once wrote, according to forest preserve literature. “Groups sometimes took off for the sandbar and a hidden lake beyond. There were horseshoes, a concession, everything we needed. Renwick summers were fun.”

When the quarry froze in winter, about 140 men found work harvesting as much as 25,000 tons of ice to be shipped to Chicago and other cities to cool ice boxes.

All the while, the Chicago Gravel Co. continued mining other areas around the lake. And, ultimately, it destroyed the good thing it had going. Mining and sewage runoff polluted the lake and the water became unsafe for swimming in the 1940s.

Home makeover

When the mine closed in 1983, the Will County chapter of the Audubon Society launched a seven-year campaign to preserve the rookery. The forest preserve district's Friends of the Rookery was created to join forces with them.

But the birds were hard on their island home. Droppings from hundreds of birds killed trees and plants, causing the soil to erode into the lake.

The solution was the telephone pole towers/nests that fill the islands today. The man-made structures prevent the droppings from falling onto the soil while offering attractive perches for the thousands of birds who, like the fair-weather frolickers of the early 1900s, savor their summers at the lake.

If you're interested in taking a Wednesday or Saturday bird hike, go to the welcome lodge at the main park entrance on Renwick Road, just north of U.S. 30. After Aug. 15, the trails circling the lake are open and hikers also can access them at Turtle Lake Access on Lockport Street or at the viewing site off U.S. 30.

For more information, go to http://www.reconnectwithnature.org/preserves-trails/Lake-Renwick-Rookery.