While barn swallows flew around the bridge over Spring Creek, Michael Davidson pointed downstream and said, ‘‘Cardinal flower,’’ as we toured Hadley Valley Preserve.
Granted, cardinal flowers stick out like misapplied red lipstick. All the same, the big-desk office guy spotted it, not the talented natural-world professionals and volunteers in our tour group.
It made me think differently about Davidson, the president and CEO of Openlands.
I digress, but restorations are the ultimate digression or obsession.
On Aug. 8, there was a formal celebration at the Gougar Road Access — with officials from the Forest Preserve District of Will County and Openlands — of a special 20-year restoration project of 193 acres along Spring Creek at the 854-acre Hadley Valley, part of the largest restoration effort in the district.
‘‘Special’’ comes from multiple partners: the district, Openlands, the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the city of Joliet, local developers and the O’Hare Modernization Mitigation Project.
‘‘Special’’ also applies because of the O’Hare mitigation, which was created in 2005 to offset the loss of 280 acres of wetlands to airport expansion. Over 20 years, the $26 million fund was overseen by Openlands and used for five projects restoring 530 acres.
Hadley Valley was special, said Joe Roth, the project leader for Openlands from the birth of the mitigation until all the performance standards were met for the Army Corps in 2017, because it met the ‘‘waters of the United States’’ provision for the Army Corps.
The other four sites — Deer Grove Forest Preserve, Bobolink Meadow Land and Water Reserve, Messenger Woods Nature Preserve and Drummond Floodplain at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie — are at the top of watersheds.
Davidson called those five strategic locations along the Des Plaines River ‘‘gold-standard landscapes. They are landscapes you can truly immerse yourself in. . . . These landscapes make the region more economically viable.’’
Contrast that with what was there.
‘‘[Hadley Valley] was basically a farm ditch,’’ said Julianne Mason, the director of conservation programs for the district, who worked on the project even before joining the district. ‘‘There was enough space to reconstruct a meandering stream.’’
She calculates about 1,000 people worked on the project over the 20 years.
What sticks with Roth was how a series of borings by the engineers found the old creek bed, then how they were able to engineer moving the soil around the site to avoid the expense of trucking it out.
‘‘The consultants were able to balance the cut and spoil over the site,’’ he said.
That’s not as sexy as late-summer splashes of color from wild bergamot, gray-headed coneflower and Queen Anne’s lace (it’s that time of year) or from the common yellowthroats and goldfinch I spotted as we toured the site at midday, but it is just as important.
Nick Budde, the ecology coordinator for the district, has done grassland bird surveys there since 2016. He said notable finds are grasshopper sparrows and savannah sparrows, but he has surveyed no bobolinks so far.
‘‘Open habitat like this used to be common; now it is really rare,’’ he said.
While the reconstruction mainly followed the previous stream bed, Mason noted: ‘‘It is a lot more water than 150 years ago. That was a huge challenge.’’
Between urban sprawl and climate change, significantly more water comes through Spring Creek than did historically.
‘‘What was a really cool thing during construction, they found lots of bottles,’’ Mason said. ‘‘When they were filing in the stream in the 1950s, they must have been drinking heavily.’’
For Roth, what really sticks out is when he and a mussels guy from the Shedd Aquarium toured from I-355 to Gougar Road, they found ‘‘mussels had recolonized that section. . . . If they build it, will they come?’’
The answer was yes. Since then, even an ellipse mussel, a species of concern in Illinois, showed up on its own.
‘‘That is very gratifying,’’ Roth said. ‘‘Nature has a chance to reestablish, and all that engineering and work was done right.’’
As our group walked back after the tour, a truck pulled up and several people jumped out to treat willows. There’s always work to do at a restoration.
It was time.
Hadley Valley has a multi-use (walking, lollygagging, biking, horseback riding, running, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing) ‘‘5.09-mile, crushed limestone segment of the Spring Creek Greenway Trail.’’ Even at midday under a sizzling sun, the trail was constantly used when we toured.
Hadley Valley has accesses at Bruce Road in Homer Glen, Gougar Road in Joliet and Route 6 in Joliet.
Information about Hadley Valley, which has picnicking and shelters, can be found at https://www.reconnectwithnature.org/preserves-trails/preserves/hadley-valley.
