Egrets

When I was on the "high bridge" in Lemont, IL, taking pictures of the Santa Fe bridge across the Des Plaines river, I noticed a couple of egrets off to the side.

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And after I had taken pictures of I&M Canal Lock #2 in Lockport, IL, on my drive back I noticed an Egret standing on the edge of the canal.

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I was surprised that it stuck around while I got out of the van and fumbled with the camera. But it wasn't going to pose forever. It took off.

If you are having trouble finding it in the following, look just above the canal surface near the grasses.

Santa Fe Prairie

(Satellite)

(Update: a duplicate post)

Hidden behind what most people would consider an industrial wasteland of railroad yards and freight warehouses is an undisturbed prairie near Hodgkins, IL. Because of the 75th street exit that was added to the I-294 tollway for the UPS facility, it is easy to get to. Go east on 75th street and follow the curve until it terminates at Santa Fe Drive. Follow Santa Fe and turn right on the first road, Leon Cook Drive. At the turn should be a sign indicating you should turn there to go to River Road. It is easier to catch that sign than the street sign. At the end of Leon Cook Drive, turn right and go to the parking lot. When I was on the Leon Cook bridge taking pictures of the tracks, I had noticed a wetlands. After I read the plaque

I went back up on the bridge to take a picture of the "wetlands".

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I also drove along River Road. Much of the river is blocked by trees growing along side the river. But I did find some breaks in the trees.

Unfortunately, the light poles and billboards do remind you that I-55 is just on the other side of the river.

Dennis DeBruler posted three photos with the comment:

In 1998, BNSF donated the native prairie land behind this caboose to the I&M Canal Civic Center Authority for continued preservation. They also donated the caboose as an interpretative center. Very little prairie land is left in Illinois. This land is even more rare because it is a mesic gravel prairie.

License: Creative Commons Attribution: Dennis DeBruler (CC BY)

Location: https://www.google.com/.../@41.757627,-87.../data=!3m1!1e3

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Introduction

My main interest is Industrial History. But there is a strong relationship between technologies and towns. For example, lead mining built Galena, IL. In fact, the name Galena is for the mineral "galena", the most important lead ore. Another example is that the building of the Illinois and Michigan Canal caused the discovery of dolostone (or the older term of dolomite, a stone that is similar to limestone) near what is now Lemont, IL. Lemont was built because of the construction of the I&M Canal, and it continued to prosper after the construction because of the dolostone quarries that were opened nearby. The building of the Wabash Canal in Indiana allowed several towns in central Indiana to prosper for a few decades in the 1800s. Railroads created many towns "from scratch" because steam locomotives needed to be services, crews needed to be changed, and the railroads wanted the income from selling the land. And existing towns competed with each other to entice a railroad to come through their town.

But technologies that help create towns also many times caused the town to fall on hard times. For example, the lead mines in Galena ran out of lead. There are many ghost towns in Colorado that are also examples of towns being built because of silver or gold being discovered, and then the towns died when the ore ran out. Many towns created because of a canal had a burst of prosperity and then fell on hard times because the invention of the steam locomotive made canals obsolete. Lemont's quarries were closed after the limestone quarries around Bedford Indiana started producing.

These towns that were created by a technology that later became obsolete are time capsules. During their heyday, they would create buildings with elaborate architecture, churchs with nice pipe organs, theaters for opera, etc. And then when they fell on hard times, they did not have the money to "modernize" their facilities. And now some of the towns are experiencing new prosperity as time capsules. Both the town's buildings and the antiques in those buildings attracted tourist traffic. And the quaintness of towns attracted artists and craftsmen. So the towns are now aggressively preserving their old, generally 1800s, stuff. So a purpose of this blog is to record the social history of towns that I discover while researching industrial history.

Another purpose of this blog is to be the travelogue aspect of visiting places to take pictures of bridges, dams, steel mills, oil refineries, electrical substations, glass factories, quarries, etc.

And this blog provides a better "home" for essays concerning interesting aspects of nature that I discover while driving around looking for pictures of industrial objects such as the Santa Fe Prairie I found while trying to figure out how to take pictures of the BNSF Willow Springs Intermodal Facility. (I never did get any pictures of the BNSF yard.) Also, the tow paths of many of the old canals have become trails that take one through some nice nature areas while going to take pictures of locks.