Skokie Lagoons - History

History

The site of Skokie Lagoons was previously a marsh, known by the Potawatomi name Chewbab Skokie ("Big Wet Prairie") or Skokie Marsh. The marsh was partially drained by local farmers, leaving a peat bog. During spring floods it became a lake that inundated adjacent property and roads. Between 1933 and 1940, the Civilian Conservation Corps executed a plan to bring the waters under control. Several thousand workers moved four million yards of earth to recontour the land, creating the artificial lagoons of today.

From 1955 to 1974, a Nike anti-aircraft site was located within Skokie Lagoons, north of Tower Road.

High waters erode the shoreline, filling the lagoons with sediment and damaging the fish habitat. From 1995 to 1999, the Chicago Audubon Society began a program of shoreline restoration. Thousands of plants were added to the shoreline to help limit erosion. Once it was realized that most of the plants in the southern, downstream lagoons were lost during high water, restoration efforts were concentrated on the upstream lagoons. Efforts were made to clear invasive species such as garlic mustard and buckthorn, and replace them with native plants and grasses like goldenrod, tall coreopsis, compass plant, cup plant, aster, coneflower, switchgrass, rattlesnake masters, woodland brome and cinquefoil.

In 1996, the FPDCC began a restoration program, which included the use of aquatic herbicides to improve shore fishing, dredging to remove sediment, poisoning and restocking the fish and building a boat launch south of Tower Road. The 2008 Illinois EPA assessment of the water in Skokie Lagoons listed "Fish Consumption" and "Aesthetic Quality" as "Not Supporting" due to mercury, total suspended solids, phosphorus, aquatic plants and algae.