Coking is part of the steel-making process. So the “steel industry waste” with spontaneous vegetation at this Acme Steel site is not slag, like at most other sites on the Slag Map, but what often looks like charcoal briquets made of fly ash.

We found a snake friend taking advantage of the raking sunlight.

Check out another visit to the same site a few years ago: Indian Ridge Marsh and beyond, IL • November 2020