Fullersburg Woods joins National Register of Historic Places
Fullersburg Woods oozes history.
At its south end, a brick 19th-century gristmill looks like it belongs in New England, especially in peak fall color season. Farther up a newly revitalized stretch of Salt Creek, a nature education center feels like a log lodge retreat. During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps built it as a boathouse.
Graue Mill landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. More than 50 years later, the U.S. Department of the Interior has placed nearly 177 acres of the Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve in Oak Brook on the National Register.
“Fullersburg Woods is one of the Forest Preserve District’s most popular destinations, and this designation recognizes the history and architecture that continue to make it special today,” DuPage County Forest Preserve President Daniel Hebreard said in a statement. “Visitors can experience many of the same landscapes, trails, and shelters that have drawn people here for generations.”
Erica Ruggiero, principal and historic preservation specialist, and London Hainsworth, historic preservation specialist, both of the firm McGuire Igleski & Associates, prepared the nomination documents that earned the listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve Historic District includes the previously listed Graue Mill site and recognizes the legacy of a Civilian Conservation Corps unit.
Amid the Depression, the forest preserve district had limited funding for property improvements and requested the placement of a CCC camp as part of FDR’s New Deal, according to the nomination form written by Ruggiero and Hainsworth.
An evidently resourceful bunch, Company V-1668 pitched camp in 1933 and gave Fullersburg much of the character it still has today. The boathouse built by the corps next to Salt Creek followed the “design philosophies” of the National Park Service Rustic style, as documented in detail by Ruggiero and Hainsworth.
It’s also known as “Parkitecture.”
The boathouse “seamlessly integrates into the natural landscape as it is nestled into a hill, thereby diminishing the building's scale and stature,” the form reads. “The use of natural, raw materials, including stone and logs, further unifies the building with its surroundings.”
Company V-1668 was certainly a productive unit.
“The site retains significant physical evidence of their craftsmanship, including substantial alterations to Salt Creek, the creation of islands, and reforestation campaigns, as well as the construction of bridges, buildings, structures, and objects largely built by hand with local materials, between 1933 and 1938,” the nomination form recalls.
In 2023, the Graue Mill dam, also built by the corps, was removed as part of a broader effort to restore about a mile and a quarter of Salt Creek. The dam also wasn’t from the same period as the gristmill, which remains a museum.