Skokie River - The River Today

The River Today

As time passed, the drainage area of the Skokie River became some of the most valuable suburban land in the United States. It stood adjacent to key commuter lines of the Chicago and North Western Railway and the Milwaukee Road (both now operated by Metra), and was valuable to developers as early as the late 19th century. As the river and its drainage area were flood-prone, this created problems.

The Skokie River, in the 20th century, became one of the most altered rivers in the Chicago area. The river and its tributaries were extensively ditched, embanked, and landscaped. In Lake County, the river valley west of suburbs such as Highland Park and Lake Forest became home to a series of golf course developments, with the river re-landscaped into a gently descending staircase of water hazards.

Further south in Cook County, much of the river basin was acquired by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County in the early 20th century and then, in the 1930s, landscaped by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) into the Skokie Lagoons Forest Preserve. For a time, the Skokie Lagoons project utilized ten separate CCC companies, making the lagoons the largest CCC project in the United States. The wetlands were dredged and replaced with seven artificial lagoons as much as 16 feet (5 m) deep, in line with pastoral landscape appreciation patterns of the time. The lagoons cover 190 acres (0.8 km²) in area. The Forest Preserve District took some limited actions in the 1990s to alter some of the lagoons and try to restore a vestige of the original Skokie River wetland terrain.

As of 2006, the Forest Preserve District periodically restocks the Skokie River with fish matching some of the species present in early historical times, including bass, walleye, northern pike, channel catfish, bluegill, crappie, and bullheads. Authorities try to keep carp, an invasive alien, under control.