All are welcome to join us for our Spring EcoWalk at Big Rock Forest Preserve on Jericho Road in Big Rock. This fully accessible, intergenerational event will be held from 9:00 am to 11:00 am. We will meet in the first, main parking lot off Jericho Road.

Mature woodlands, high-quality marshes, tall-grass prairie, clear-running creeks, and a 65-foot-deep lake are just some of the highlights of Big Rock Forest Preserve. Big Rock Creek, rated one of the best quality streams in Illinois, is home to freshwater mussels — indicators of high-quality habitat. High sandy bluffs overlook patches of woodlands and prairies in the preserve, and a specialized wetland called a fen is fed by underground seeps on the southeastern portion of the preserve. The FVPC EcoWalk will visit in the spring and hope to hear some frogs and toads calling.

Questions? Email Jeff Mengler.

Organizer for this event: Earth Stewardship Team

(Posted 1/20/26. Source: Jeff’s 1/19/26 email.)

All are welcome to join us for our Summer EcoWalk at the Horlock Prairie in LeRoy Oaks Forest Preserve, 37W700 Dean Street in St. Charles. This intergenerational event takes place from 9:00 am to 11:00 am. The trails are not paved, but are mowed trails. We will meet in the parking lot on the south side of Dean Street at the Great Western Trail trailhead and walk to the prairie.

LeRoy Oakes Forest Preserve includes a high-quality prairie, woodland, and Ferson Creek, which meanders through the preserve. Contained within the preserve is a true prairie remnant (the Murray prairie), various restorations (including the Bob Horlock Prairie), flood plain forests, seeps, oak woodlands, and grassy fields.

The Bob Horlock Prairie is a prairie that was recreated from an old farm field adjacent to a high-quality prairie remnant by the local high school prairie restoration club from 1973 to 1983 – under the tutelage of Mr. Robert Horlock. Students propagated and planted seedings from seeds collected locally. Approximately 130 species of prairie plants including both mesic and wet-mesic plant communities have been established here.

Questions? Email Jeff Mengler.

Organizer for this event: Earth Stewardship Team

(Posted 1/20/26. Source: Jeff’s 1/19/26 email.)

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.)