This place is a unique kind of urban restoration. Van Vlissingen Park has been owned by the Chicago Park District since 2011. When we first started visiting, it was an overgrown, impenetrable, Phragmites-filled mess, like many public lands around Chicago in the 80s through early 2000s.

And the restoration isn’t back to some pre-colonial time; this is no remnant habitat here. It’s a spontaneous ecosystem that moved in on a bed of slag and construction waste. Some of the waste continues to erupt from layers of soil; bricks and building materials form vignettes highlighting the ever present human input into these urban ecosystems.

Now that it’s Marian R. Byrnes Natural Area, it’s a beautiful slag prairie and wetland, with a luxurious woodland path.