autumn

US Steel Southworks, IL • October 2024

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I hadn’t been to this parcel – south of 87th, abutting the mouth of the Calumet River – in awhile, but I wanted to see what ephemeral ecosystem on Calumet slag barrens on the US Steel Southworks (USX) site will be lost when the Chicago quantum campus is built.

The USX site is one of the wildest greenspaces in Chicago – in a really unregulated state. Since most of the property is not under active land management, all manner of wildlife can wander around with little chance of interaction with humans. At dusk and dawn, large mammals are plentiful.

First, a little bit about this parcel. Unlike the north and central parcels of the site, this spot on the far southeast has arguably had the most disturbance due to development: fill has been added and graded around these ~40 acres since at least 2003. In 2011, Dave Matthews Band played a show, beneath “truckloads of wood chips … imported to cover the ground.” (I must return to hypothesize about differences in plant community on slag with, and without, this organically rich additive!)

Buildings were still at the site in 1991; by the year 2000, most structures were gone and there was a fence next to the Bush on the west so that the whole property was invisible to the public.

US Steel Southworks, 1991
US Steel Southworks, 2000

Today, the vast open areas with crushed gravel-like slag can sustain wave after wave of short lived annuals that thrive in disturbed areas.

Other quadrants haven’t been regraded as recently, and here, copses of pygmy cottonwoods show us where nutrients and organic matter have collected.

I never thought of using the infamous Phragmites as an indicator species, but from our research on slag barrens, we have found the most interesting plant species in the depressions and wetlands of the slag barrens. In this case, the telltale seedheads (often confused for “prairie grasses”) belie the rare native orchids, sedges, and spike rushes that can similarly tolerate these damp human-modified sites. There wasn’t much to see in December around the Phrag, but it would be worth checking out in the summer, if the site is still accessible.

Elsewhere at the site…

South Slip
barge headed into Lake Michigan from the mouth of the Calumet River

Thornton Quarries, IL • September 2024

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we drove all the way along thornton-lansing road, ignoring our usual stop at the fairy ponds, and drooling at the restored forest preserve to the south;

(c) Google Maps

then turned south, wiggling beside, and then across, thorn creek. (I was focused on driving so these are all snips from google street view:)

(c) Google Maps

“and where,” I mused, “are the quarries?” So we drove further west and my god they are huge. hidden, sloppily, by recruits from the local seed pool, or so completely by earthen berms, that it’s not clear exactly where they are.

(c) Google Maps

then we noticed a lookout on the east side of this southern quarry. no one else was around.

we were unable to actually access the lookout, but it’s clear it wasn’t too long ago that people were invited into this space by manicured junipers and fossils. what a view it must have been!

unfortunately there was not an easy way to bypass the fence, so we walked tamely back east, along the mowed grass and gravel, both dusty. it’s been weeks without rain. the young trees – ash, tree of heaven, buckthorn – sadly hung their leaves, in heavy yellows and reds.

It’s not a place where I’d like to fall in, but nothing is more inviting than restricted access…

Acme Steel Coke Plant, IL • November 2023

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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

Gun Club Ponds, Chicago, IL • September 2022

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Old maps call this spot Gun Club Ponds, and it doesn’t take long, after walking the narrow strip between the railroad embankment and wall of Phragmites, that the gun club comes into focus.

A good place to look for waterfowl.

there’s slag here too!

a tunnel of european buckthorn leads us to the ponds.

it’s big leaf season as we head back over the tracks to the Indian Ridge Marsh parking lot.

Indian Ridge Marsh and beyond, IL • November 2020

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A gorgeously warm November afternoon yielded a golden IRM, with the last of the asters and goldenrod setting seed.

I started on the trail going north, through the wet prairie-

-and then kept going.

At the old Wisconsin Steel/Acme Coke site I found a new slag for the typology- charcoal briquet slag?! It was all quite dark black (some were also really lightweight), even if the raking sun bleached out some of the photos below. Or maybe this is just some coking byproduct.

It was really quiet and isolated in a sea of Aristida and a few interspersed cottonwoods and willows. I’m quite surprised I didn’t see any deer or other animals about. In fact, I was only surrounded by birds birds birds (mostly dark eyed juncos), in the the many standing dead trees – and a big crabapple – once back at Indian Ridge Marsh.