Salt Creek is a 43.4-mile-long (69.8 km) stream in northeastern Illinois. It is an important tributary of the Des Plaines River, part of the Illinois River and ultimately the Mississippi River watersheds. It rises in northwest Cook County at Wilke Marsh in Palatine and flows in a meandering course generally southward through DuPage County, returning to central Cook County and emptying into the Des Plaines River near Brookfield. Most of the creek's watershed is urbanized, densely populated and flood-prone.
Dams were constructed along the creek in 1978 within the Ned Brown Forest Preserve near Elk Grove Village, Illinois, creating the 590-acre (2.4 km2) Busse Lake. A diversion tunnel was constructed approximately 1.6 miles (2.6 km) north of the confluence with the Des Plaines River, at a point where the two streams are separated by only 1,600 feet (490 m).
Tributary streams include Addison Creek. The Graue Mill historic gristmill stands on the bank of the creek in Oak Brook.
Famous quotes containing the words salt, creek and/or river:
“All the sea-gods are dead.
You, Venus, come home
To your salt maidenhead....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“It is from quiet places like this all over the world that the forces accumulate which presently will overbear any attempt to accomplish evil on a large scale. Like the rivulets gathering into the river, and the river into the seas, there come from communities like this streams that fertilize the consciences of men, and it is the conscience of the world that we are trying to place upon the throne which others would usurp.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)