• The Prairie Point Overlook gives a clear view of Northwest Illinois’ Driftless Area landscape.
Brad Petersburg’s UTV pitched at a hang-on angle as we descended the Walnut Trail at the Witkowsky Wildlife Area. I braced myself with the roll bar until Brad stopped to chain saw a tree limb that had fallen across the trail. Then we emerged from the upper woodlands to the prairied valley floor at the 1100-acre refuge where we encountered—of all things not expected in a prairie—the concrete remains of an abandoned satellite station.
The Witkowsky Wildlife Area is a partner property of the Jo Daviess Conservation Foundation (JDCF) in northwest Illinois. The property is owned by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) and maintained in part by a Witkowsky Friends group associated with JDCF. I was fortunate to tag along on a trail clearing mission with one of the Friends. Motorized vehicles are not otherwise allowed on the property.
The long journey to becoming a wildlife area began in 1986 when Jack and Iris Witkowsky donated 400 acres to the IDNR with the stipulation that the state add more property to the refuge and develop trails open to the public. IDNR succeeded at the first task but had not progressed on the second when concerned neighbors, led by Brad Petersburg, approached JDCF in 2012 about possibly intervening.
JDCF is a private conservation foundation that owns seven public preserves totaling over 1,500 acres in northwest Illinois, but its mission also includes helping landowners preserve environmentally sensitive habitat through other means. Under these auspices, JDCF completed a cooperative agreement with the IDNR in 2017 by which the local Friends would develop trails and keep them cleared of fallen trees, and the state would keep them mowed.
The refuge fully opened to the public in 2021.
Brad had quickly become enamored of the nearby Witkowsky Wildlife Area after relocating to the Driftless Area. “In 2006,” Brad explains, “my wife and I purchased a cabin in the woods of Jo Daviess County as a second home. A year later, when the opportunity arose to sell our farm home in north-central Iowa, we moved to Jo Daviess full-time.” The Driftless Area, they discovered, had the perfect mix of wooded hills, open fields, and rural atmosphere. But the Witkowsky property lingered in terms of becoming open to the public with usable trails.
Brad went into high gear when the cooperative agreement was completed. He began laying out the refuge’s ten miles of trail, conferring with the IDNR to make sure the paths didn’t impinge on fragile ecosystems. “The challenge of creating a new trail system was appealing,” Brad says. “I enjoy studying the landscape, laying out and clearing trails that highlight interesting features like rock outcroppings, large trees, and big views.” Dozens of friends and neighbors helped clear the trails over several months.
Our first stop was about halfway down the upper portion of the Walnut Trail. Brad pulled the vehicle to the side of the trail and led me along a deer path to a small clearing in the woods. Here Brad pointed to a massive tree nearly 100 feet tall that had been verified as (tied for) the second largest red oak in Illinois. Its girth would take at least four adults to encircle. However, since that designation, its largest limb had fallen in a storm, revealing a hollowed trunk.
Perched on the still-freshly splintered branch, Brad worried that the tree might now be in decline. Even so, he mused, “They say oaks spend 100 years growing, 100 years living, and 100 years dying.”
Next on the trail clearing mission was the Prairie Point Overlook. Located at the end of a wooded ridge, the Point looks out over the remainder of the woods, the prairied valley floor, and a neighboring privately owned pond. A signboard explains that the hilly and varied landscape is part of the Driftless Area, the four-state region (northwest Illinois, northeast Iowa, southwest Minnesota, and southwest and central Wisconsin) that had been spared the leveling effects of the glaciers.
Brad pointed to a white splotch on the prairie below, nearly tucked away beneath the view from the ledge. That, he said, was the now-abandoned shell of the telecommunications “Earth Station” that had once operated in the valley. Brad left me hanging for the moment. We’d learn more, he said, when we got there.
After stopping a few times to clear fallen limbs from the trail and to clean the signboards, we emerged onto the valley. In the October sun, prairie flowers had already spent their royal purples and gold for the season, and the grasses had lost their green. Still, big bluestem towered over the UTV and pulsed in the persistent breeze like ocean waves.
Finally, we arrived at the Earth Station. Two massive concrete hulls, partially engulfed in vegetation, sprouted from the prairie floor. An information board shows a photo of the communications facility in its glory days, topped by two massive radar dishes. The Earth Station was one of seven U.S. communications sites built in the 1970s to ferry long-distance telephone calls to upper atmosphere satellites, from which they’d be bounced back to other locations. Local newspaper photos show the facility’s interior complete with massive computers and technicians sporting 1970s hairstyles. The Earth Station was decommissioned in 1986, by which time its technology had become obsolete.
The interior works and the massive satellite dishes were removed from the two circular structures, leaving behind just the concrete shells. Brad and others have fancied how the structures might some day be used if enough money were somehow available (and with IDNR approval). “Star-gazing on the roof? Concerts inside the buildings?” he wonders.
My wife Dianne and I returned the following day to explore more of the Witkowsky Wildlife Area’s scenic trails. We followed the two-mile Cedar Trail as it first led across fields still leased to local farmers before dropping into a stream valley. Tall cedars outlined the start of the wooded portion of the trail, and the late afternoon sun flooded the stream bottom deciduous woods in a gold light. The ascent treated us to limestone outcroppings hidden in plain view in the woods. We drove the remaining perimeter of the refuge, saving the Oak Trail for another visit.
The Witkowsky Wildlife Area offers a view into what the Driftless Area landscape looked like prior to Euro-American settlement. Ironically, even its “futuristic” telecommunications Earth Station ruin is a harbinger of days gone by.
-- October 2024
• In autumn, prairie grasses tower over the hiking paths in the Witkowsky bottomlands.
• Only the shell remains of the prairie valley’s “Earth Station,” which once housed two massive telecommunications satellite dishes that ushered long-distance phone calls in the 1970s-80s.
• Asters provide autumn color after most of the season’s prairie flowers have faded.
• Asters provide autumn color after most of the season’s prairie flowers have faded.
• Brad Petersburg stands beside Illinois’ second largest red oak at the Witkowsky Wildlife Area in northwest Illinois.