Ye Olde Renwick Road Traditional Cache
Reviewer Smith: As I have not heard from the cache owner within the requested time frame, the cache is being archived.
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Reviewer Smith
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This is near the old road leading to the old Chicago Gravel company, which later became the Lake Renwick Heron Rookery Nature Preserve
Plainfield’s first pioneers flocked to the area that is now Lake Renwick to establish the village's earliest community, Walker’s Grove.
That patch of prairie - named for Methodist minister Jesse Walker, who helped establish the settlement in 1828 - has morphed over the years from grassy plain to gravel quarry to spring-fed lake to summer retreat to bird sanctuary.
The Forest Preserve District of Will County not stepped in to prevent it from being turned into a residential development. The 320-acre site was purchased for $766,000 in 1989.
The Lake Renwick Heron Rookery Nature Preserve was declared a state nature reserve in 1992, protecting the breeding habitat for the five endangered or threatened species of birds that nest on islands in the center of the 200-acre lake.
Interestingly, it was the invasion of the Joliet Gravel Co. that would ultimately lead to the nature preserve as it is today. In 1900 the company opened a rock quarry, mining 200 carloads of four grades of gravel on a daily basis.
13yrs later, it was purchased by the Chicago Gravel Co. to mine ballast for roads and train tracks. When steam shovels accidently hit a freshwater spring and flooded the quarry, a whole new realm of possibilities opened up.
While the company continued to mine the site, officials recognized the recreational advantages and Lake Renwick -- named for Frank Renwick, founder of the Chicago Gravel Co.
They company stocked the lake with fish and started selling $3 season passes for swimmers. An elaborate complex was built, including beaches, a bath house, swimsuit rentals, pier and diving boards. During the Roaring '20s, a dance hall, which later became a skating rink, opened on the south side of the lake.
Old-timers may remember Powell’s Mill Restaurant, with its open-air porch that served as both dance floor and fishing dock and large Dutch windmill.
When the quarry froze in winter, about 140 men found work harvesting as much as 25,000 tons of ice to be shipped to Chicago and other cities to cool ice boxes.
All the while, the Chicago Gravel Co. continued mining other areas around the lake. And, ultimately, it destroyed the good thing it had going. Mining and sewage runoff polluted the lake and the water became unsafe for swimming in the 1940s.
When it closed in 1983, the Will County chapter of the Audubon Society launched a 7yr campaign to preserve the rookery.
But the birds were hard on their island home. Droppings from hundreds of birds killed trees and plants, causing the soil to erode into the lake.
The solution was the telephone pole towers/nests that fill the islands today. The man-made structures prevent the droppings from falling onto the soil while offering attractive perches for the thousands of birds who, like the fair-weather frolickers of the early 1900s, savor their summers at the lake.
You'll be looking for a cammoed pill bottle. Please bring a writing utensil. There is residential parking nearby, and GZ is just a short walk away.
**CONGRATS TO TEAM BEERNUTS ON THE FTF! ***
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Pna or frra sebz tebhaq, ohg bayl frra
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