All are welcome to join us for our Fall EcoWalk at the McKee Marsh within Blackwell Forest Preserve. This is an intergenerational, fully accessible event. For our FVPC EcoWalk, we will meet in the McKee Marsh parking lot on the north side of Mack Road and walk the accessible limestone trail around the marsh.

Visitors at Blackwell Forest Preserve walk on land shaped by the retreating Wisconsin Glacier 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. At Blackwell’s McKee Marsh, the 13,000-year-old skeleton of a woolly mammoth — one of the oldest finds of its kind in northeastern Illinois — was discovered in 1977. In the 1830s, Erastus Gary, one of Winfield Township’s first settlers and a founder of Gary, Indiana, made his home on the land that is now Blackwell Forest Preserve. There, he operated a grist mill — Gary’s Mill — east of the West Branch of the DuPage River. Questions? Email Jeff Mengler.

Organizer for this event: Earth Stewardship Team

(Posted 1/21/26. Source: Jeff’s 1/19/26 email.)