‘Unlike anything else’: Kane forest district to make rare bog more accessible to visitors

In northern Kane County lies a reminder of a time when giant ice sheets shaped the land.

Rutland Bog is a haven for frogs, home to several fish species and habitat for rare plants that grow in its acidic peat.

But seeing any of it requires tromping across the farm fields that overlook it on the eastern side. On its western edge, canary reed grass taller than a person blocks the view from Manning Road. Push through the grass at your peril, because about 10 feet off the road, you may stumble into the bog, which is up to 15 feet deep in places, according to the Kane County Forest Preserve District.

The forest district wants to change that as part of $1.6 million in proposed work at the Rutland Forest Preserve, where the bog sits.

“It’s unlike anything else within the county,” said Zach Tegge, the district’s landscape architect, during a visit to the bog Wednesday.

Rutland Master Plan 3.pdf

The district plans to install a wheelchair-accessible, low-profile metal walkway, with interpretive signage, “to help the public understand what a bog is, why we’re protecting it, as it’s the last remnant bog within Kane County,” Tegge said.

According to a district memo, the bog represents the southern limit of the acidic bog community in Illinois. Bogs formed during the last Ice Age, as retreating ice sheets left depressions that collected water. Acid-loving vegetation, such as sphagnum moss, grew in them.

The district bought the land containing the bog in 2020 and added it to the preserve, which is on the north side of Big Timber Road and east of Route 47 near Hampshire.

“It (the bog) being one-of-its-kind within our county specifically, that’s why we’ve had it on our radar for many, many years,” Tegge said.

In 1978, the Kane County Natural Area Survey identified the bog as an important place, Tegge said. But it was suffering from “an unhealthy usurpation of space by Old World weeds,” in particular, because of the low diversity of native plants, according to the survey.

“Nevertheless, for both the state and the county, Rutland Bog stands as a very important floristic community, representing the southern limit for the acid bog community in Illinois and the only one of its kind for Kane County,” the survey states.

Tegge said the district is keeping the identity of some rare plants in the bog “under wraps right now, just to protect them” from seed poachers who have hit other forest preserves. Among the species the district acknowledges are leatherleaf, black chokeberry, bog birch and winterberry trees and shrubs.

Less is known about what animals make the bog home. But based on what has been found at Volo Bog in Lake County, district workers expect they may find white-tailed deer, muskrats, raccoon, beavers, coyotes, red and gray foxes, striped skunks and bats.

District workers have chipped away at removing some invasive plants near the bog, including buckthorn. And, yes, workers have fallen in at the edges of the bog, up to their waists, Tegge said.

On Monday, the district will ask the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for $600,000 in an Open Space Land Acquisition and Development grant to help pay for the work.

Besides the boardwalk to the bog, the district wants to replace a picnic shelter and restrooms, and turn part of a road in the preserve into a crushed-asphalt walking trail, in an area that leads to a pond where great blue herons nest. An observation station will be installed at the herons’ rookery, and a new entrance will be made using an old farm road.

The plan also calls for a pier at a fishing pond near the former Harrigan Farm farmstead.

Eventually, the district plans to convert land that is still being farmed back to prairie.

The bog is part of 173 acres the district bought in 2020 for $2.58 million.

ssarkauskas@dailyherald.com