History
The Kankakee Swamp wetlands were the home of many beaver and other fur-bearing mammals, which led to the nearby locality being incorporated as the municipality of Beaverville. The nearby towns of Chebanse and St. Anne pay tribute to the area's French-Canadian fur-trading heritage.
During the great drainage of the Kankakee Swamp, starting in the late 19th century, ditches were dug all over eastern Iroquois County to drain the outwash plain. While most of the ditched land became fertile farmland, the sands of far-northeastern Iroquois County resisted profitable farming activity.
In 1944 a predecessor agency of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) began to acquire the land of the future Iroquois County State Wildlife Area. The population of the greater prairie chicken had crashed in Illinois, and the state hoped the flagship species could be induced to rebuild a breeding poulation in the new sanctuary.
Read more about this topic: Iroquois County State Wildlife Area
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)