I confess that I am the one who added this adventure to our list of 30 Things Everyone Should Do In Chicagoland. I further confess that I’m not sure why. To begin with, it’s location on the Illinois River, 60 miles or so southwest of Aurora, certainly stretches the limits of “Chicagoland.” Furthermore, it’s pretty lame adventurewise.
We were happy enough to go when my niece invited us to join her and her kids on a field trip. After a picnic lunch, we headed down the trail along the bluffs above the Illinois River toward the major feature of the park — The Effigy Tumuli.
The land was donated to the state by the Ottawa Silica Company after they’d finished mining coal and silica and leaving things pretty much of a mess. To reclaim the land, some guy named Michael Heizer designed five sculptures to look like Indian burial mounds (tumuli). Since tumuli were often in the shape of animals, Heizer picked five creatures commonly seen in the area — a water strider, a frog, a catfish, a turtle, and a snake. He brought in bulldozers and covered the area with mounds. Here’s a map. (I thought I was by the water strider, but according to this map, I was way off to the side, across a road and out of the park entirely!)
I took this pan from the top of the catfish. The snake and turtle, indistinguishable from this point, are on the left.
The adventure, as listed, requires me to walk on the tumuli, so make things official, here I am on the left eye of the catfish.
And here’s my family as seen from my perch atop the tail of the turtle.
Naturally, the snake mound looked the most like what it was supposed to be, but there was no way to capture it on film. It’s over 2,000 feet long and wrapped around a pit where silica was mined in the 1940’s.
Two more pans. This is the water strider (it’s 600 feet across), the only other tumulus that is at all identifiable, as seen from the back of the frog.
The mounds are on the bluff above the Illinois River.
It was the first hot day of the year, although there was a pleasant breeze off the river. And while I wouldn’t recommend visiting the park, even if you happen to be driving by, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t have a fine time.
