The Grand Kankakee Marsh (or Great Kankakee Marsh or Kankakee Marsh) of northern Indiana and northern Illinois was one of the largest wetlands and freshwater marshes in the contiguous United States, and was frequently referred to as "The Everglades of the North".Mitsch, William J.; Gosselink, James G. Wetlands, 5th Edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2015, p. 63.PBS.ORG. "Everglades of the North: the Story of the Grand Kankakee Marsh". Lakeshore PBS, WEB: 2012. The marsh was formed by melting glaciers during the Late Pleistocene, approximately 13,000 to 16,000 Years Before Present (YBP).Black, J.R. The Kankakee River General Physical and Historical Characteristics. Olivet Nazarene University, Community Partnerships, ONU Digital Collections, WEB: 2023. It was the home of Indigenous nations for thousands of years until the Indian Removal Act in the 19th century.
The marsh existed within the Kankakee River drainage basin's .Gross, DL; Berg, RC. "Geology of Kankakee River System in Kankakee County, Illinois". Illinois Geological Survey Environmental Geology, January 1981, p. 1. Its estimated size ranged between to over across , and its main tributary, the Kankakee, was over long with over 2,000 meander bends.Illinois Dept. of Energy and Natural Resources, et al. "The Kankakee River Yesterday And Today". Champaign, Ill.: Illinois Dept. of Energy and Natural Resources, 1981, pp. 1–2, 4, 23.Isaacs, Marion C. The Kankakee: River of History. United States: s.n., 1964, pp. 4, 16.Campbell, John L. Report Upon the Improvement of the Kankakee River and the Drainage of the Marsh Lands in Indiana. Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, State printer, 1883, p. 7.Blatchley, W.S. (State Geologist), et al. Indiana. Department of Geology and Natural Resources. Thirty-Second Annual Report. 1907. Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, Contractor for State Printing and Binding, 1908, pp. 68–78, 85. Its flat elevation of maintained the land wet most of the year.
The Kankakee Marsh was a mosaic of marsh, swamp, bog, fen, forest, prairie, wet meadow, oak savanna, and barren vegetation.Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and Office of Scientific Research and Analysis. "Kankakee River Area Assessment Volume 5: Early Accounts of the Ecology of the Kankakee River Area". Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Community Partnerships ONU Digital Collections, 1998, pp. 335–351. Countless fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects, invertebrates, birds, and semi-aquatic mammals inhabited the marsh.Wagner, Mark J., et al. The Windrose Site (11Ka326): an Early Nineteenth-century Potawatomi Settlement In the Kankakee River Valley of Northeastern Illinois. Springfield, IL: Reports of Investigations No. 56, Illinois State Museum, 2001, p. 37. Its habitats consisted of vast, open stretches of shallow water with island ridges, aquatic plants (e.g., cattails, wild rice), shrubs (e.g., willows, dogwoods), and trees (e.g., maples, oaks).Burroughs, Burt E. Tales of an Old Border Town and Along the Kankakee. Fowler, Indiana: The Benton Review Shop, 1926, pp. 98, 100. Notable features included English Lake, formed by the confluence of the Kankakee and Yellow rivers, and Beaver Lake, the largest lake in Indiana until the 1880s. The marsh provided spawning grounds for fish from the Illinois River.Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and Office of Scientific Research and Analysis. "Kankakee River Area Assessment Volume 5: Early Accounts of the Ecology of the Kankakee River Area". Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Community Partnerships ONU Digital Collections, 1998, p. 1.
American settlers, syndicates, land speculators, and the Indiana General Assembly gradually destroyed the marsh between 1882 and 1917 by channelizing rivers and streams.Quinn, E.J. (essay author); Barrett, Edward (state geologist). "Soil Survey of St. Joseph County". Thirty-Sixth Annual Report of Department of Geology and Natural Resources Indiana. Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, Contractor for State Printing and Binding, 1912, pp. 302–319.Bhowmik, Nani, et al. "Hydraulics of Flow and Sediment Transport in the Kankakee River in Illinois". Illinois State Water Survey, 1980, pp. 19–24. The Kankakee River became one of the largest drainage ditches in the U.S. The draining of the marsh turned it into a major agricultural region, enabling its nine counties in 2022 to generate over $1.6 billion from crop revenues and over $847 million from livestock revenues.USDA.GOV. "Census of Agriculture 2022 State and County Profiles – Indiana". WEB: National Agricultural Statistics Services, United States Department of Agriculture, 2022.USDA.GOV. "Census of Agriculture 2022 State and County Profiles – Illinois". WEB: National Agricultural Statistics Services, United States Department of Agriculture, 2022.
The channelization of the Kankakee River has caused serious environmental issues over the last century, including floods and erosion. Siltation, suspended solids, nutrient pollution from farm runoff, and other issues have degraded water quality, requiring state and community partnerships to invest millions of dollars in soil and water conservation and stabilization programs.Schultz, R.A.; Mick, J. "The Kankakee River Basin Partnership". Kankakee River Basin Partnership, Community Partnerships ONU Digital Collections, January 1998. Extreme fluctuations in high and low flow water levels have degraded the environment and reduced wildlife habitat, causing significant biodiversity loss.Black, J.R. Kankakee River Basin and Partnership (Speaker's Notes). Olivet Nazarene University. Community Partnerships, ONU Digital Collections, 1998.
The destruction of the Grand Kankakee Marsh contributed to Indiana's total wetland losses of 87%.Dahl, Thomas E. "Wetlands Losses In the United States, 1780's to 1980's". Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1990, p. 6. Its history exemplifies how Indigenous peoples were forcibly removed and ecosystems destroyed for development.Prince, Hugh. Wetlands of the American Midwest: A Historical Geography of Changing Attitudes, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, p. 237.Dobberstein, Michael. Changing Landscapes of Northwest Indiana: Draining Beaver Lake and the Kankakee Marsh. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2025, pp. 20–23.McCorvie, Mary R.; L. Lant Christopher. "Drainage District Formation and the Loss of Midwestern Wetlands, 1850-1930". Agricultural History, vol. 67, no. 4, 1993, pp. 13–39. The marsh's history of destruction is similar to that of Tulare Lake in California, and the Great Black Swamp in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Scientific understanding about wetland ecology has grown since the 1970s, increasing public attention on the economic, environmental, and public health values of wetlands like the Grand Kankakee Marsh. This attention has contributed to important policies on wetland conservation (both American and international), natural resource management, wildlife conservation, and global efforts to prevent forced Indigenous removal, pollution, resource depletion, environmental degradation, ecocide, ecosystem collapse, and extinction caused by humans.Mitsch, William J.; Gosselink, James G. Wetlands, Fifth Edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2015, pp. 503–524.St. Charles, Bonnie. "You're on Native Land: The Genocide Convention, Cultural Genocide, and Prevention of Indigenous Land Takings". The University of Chicago Law School: Chicago Journal of International Law, Vol. 21, No. 1, Summer 2020, pp. 227–262.Robertson, H., et al. (RAMSAR) Global Wetland Outlook 2025: Valuing, Conserving, Restoring and Financing Wetlands. Gland, Switzerland: Secretariat of the Convention on Wetlands, RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands, 2025, pp. 9–11.
Natural history of the marsh Geology and hydrology
The Grand Kankakee Marsh developed on the till plains and moraines left by the retreating Laurentide ice sheet in northern Indiana and northern Illinois following the Last Glacial Maximum 24,000 Years Before Present (or YBP). During the Late Wisconsin Episode's Woodfordian Substage (20,000–14,000 YBP), deposits of diamicton, limestone, shale, and dolomite fragments across the Kankakee till plains resulted in silt clay-loam to clay soils.Hansel, Ardith K.; Johnson, W. Hilton. "Quaternary records of northeastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana". Ninth Biennial Meeting, American Quaternary Association, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1986, p. 3. The Kankakee River Basin's bedrock is primarily Silurian and Devonian.Arnold, T.L.; Sullivan, D.J.; Harris, Mitchell A.; Fitzpatrick, F.A.; Scudder, B.C.; Ruhl, P.M.; Hanchar, D.W.; Stewart, J.S. "Environmental setting of the upper Illinois River basin and implications for water quality". U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 98–4268, 1999, p. 5. Freshwater flows through dolomite and limestone Silurian-Devonian aquifers within the Kankakee Arch.Lloyd, Orville B.; Lyke, William K. "Ground Water Atlas of the United States: Segment 10, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee". Hydrologic Atlas 730-K, U.S. Geological Survey, 1995, p. K6.
The Kankakee Torrent (19,000 YBP) occurred when the ice sheet discharged large volumes of meltwater. This mega-flood deeply eroded earlier valley deposits of clay, silt, gravel, and sand, depositing thick outwash later reworked by wind, along with sand from the Valparaiso Moraine, into aeolian dunes.Wright, H. E., Jr., and D. G. Frey, editors. The Quaternary of the United States. Princeton University Press, 1965, p. 72. The torrent also redirected the Illinois River and formed Lake Chicago (14,000–11,000 YBP), which developed between the ice and the Valparaiso Moraine as the Lake Michigan ice lobe retreated.Klaer Jr., Fred H.; Stallman, Robert W. Bulletin No. 3 — Ground-Water Resources of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Part 1: South Bend Area. Indianapolis: Indiana Department of Conservation and U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, 1948, p. 19.Barrett, Edward (State Geologist). Fortieth Annual Report of Department of Geology and Natural Resources Indiana, 1915. Fort Wayne Printing Company, Contractors for State Printing and Binding, 1916, p. 23.
Lake Kankakee developed within the Kankakee valley 14,000 YBP, likely consisting of a shallow lake or a series of wetlands.Leverett, Frank; Taylor, Frank B. The Pleistocene of Indiana And Michigan and the History of the Great Lakes. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Government Printing Office, 1915, pp. 128–130.Hay, Oliver P. (essay author); Barrett, Edward (state geologist). "The Pleistocene Period and Its Vertebrata: Glacio-Lacustrine Deposits". Thirty-Sixth Annual Report of Department of Geology and Natural Resources Indiana, 1911. Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, Contractor for State Printing and Binding, 1912, p. 549.Barrett, Edward (State Geologist). Fortieth Annual Report of Department of Geology and Natural Resources Indiana, 1915. Fort Wayne Printing Company, Contractors for State Printing and Binding, 1916, pp. 39, 171. Its sand dune region covered , with water levels reaching 40 feet (12 m) above the present-day Kankakee River.Barrett, Edward (State Geologist). Forty-First Annual Report of Department of Geology and Natural Resources Indiana, 1916. Fort Wayne Printing Company, Contractors for State Printing and Binding, 1917, p. 11.