Volo Bog named Top 10 park in the nation
Supporters of the Volo Bog State Natural Area in Ingleside not only are a tight bunch but a vocal one, it turns out.
Maybe not in the traditional sense of yelling from the rooftop. But in the age of social media, their "voices" were loud enough to land Volo Bog in the Top 10 nationally of favorite parks.
One Flickr participant started a cheerleading campaign, and scores of people posted links on their Facebook pages during a furious fight to the finish in the Coca-Cola Company's "America is Your Park" campaign, which encompassed parks of all sizes including state and national facilities.
With more than 1.6 million votes, Bear Head Lake State Park in Ely, Minn., emerged at the top of the heap and was awarded a $100,000 recreation grant through the company's Live Positively initiative.
Volo Bog became an early favorite in Illinois, and the original thrust was to be the statewide winner, said Stacy Iwanicki, natural resources coordinator.
Volo traded spots with Weldon Springs State Park in Clinton and then Wildlife Prairie Park in Peoria. But as August and the contest neared an end, Volo began creeping up the national ladder, moving to 11th place on Aug. 29.
That's when the real flurry began.
"I've got 2,100 people in my address book," Iwanicki said. "My reminders became daily."
Patricia Henschen, a Fox Lake resident, who volunteers at the bog and gives tours, said she spent a minimum of two hours a day voting during the homestretch of the contest. She was joined by many others.
"I call it serial voting. It got very strange," she said. "People were just getting crazy."
When the contest ended, Volo Bog ranked 10th in the country, with 110,518 votes, outpacing Kartchner Caverns State Park in Arizona by 12,375 votes and trailing Kolomoki Mounds Historic Park in Georgia by 17,865 votes.
Participants told of voting many times and getting their family and friends to do so as well. Unfortunately, only the top spot received an award.
"The pat on the back. The prestige. No money," Iwanicki said of the reward of Volo Bog's finish in the online contest.
"It was fun. We put it in the Bog Log (newsletter). Other than that, we've got it pinned up on the wall in the visitor's center for bragging rights."
Volo Bog, then part of a dairy farm, was documented in 1921 and purchased by conservationists in 1958. When development threatened in the late 1960s, local residents staged a "save the bog" campaign and the 47-acre property was dedicated as an Illinois Nature Preserve in 1970.
The state preserve since has been expanded by more than 1,100 acres.
Essentially, the bog is a former lake left behind by melting glaciers that filled with vegetation, including a floating mat that provides a rooting area for specific plants.
It also is the furthest south open-water quaking bog in North America - all the others have filled in, Iwanicki explained.
"It's a unique place. It's a natural national landmark," registered with the U.S. Department of the Interior, she said.
Volo Bog hosted about 90,000 visitors last year.
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