49th Anniversary of North Branch Stewardship

On August 6, 1977, a dozen generous and happy people launched the North Branch Restoration Project. It inspired similar work at hundreds of sites, engaging hundreds of thousands of people, a history that continues to expand today.  

That first day, a dozen of us gathered seeds of smooth phlox on unprotected land adjacent to Somme Prairie. There seem to be no photos. But the two photos below shows us the following Saturday planting those seeds in Miami and Wayside Forest Preserves.  

This was our first day, a strange time of year to start. But it was the first weekend day after we finally got the approval of Forest Preserve staff to this work - initially cutting small brush and plantind locally gathered seeds. 

These seeds did great, but it took five years for them to grow big enough to flower. 

We were initially called the North Branch Prairie Project, and the site that inspired us was the the little 2-acre Grade A prairie at Somme. But it didn't look like this when we first saw it. 

It was full of shrubs and trees, with the quality areas scattered among them.

Bit by bit we cut brush and burned, and the quality area increased. 

Another natural area that inspired us was the rich Bunker Hill oak woodland. But it took us a while to learn (and then to convince others) that it too deserved fire, invasives control, and other stewardship. 

In time we wistfully removed "Prairie" from our name and became the North Branch Restoration Project. 

Every North Branch site - indeed every stewardship site - deserves a good curating and presentation of its history. These treasures and the work to restore them are important heritage.

Perhaps more history would be worth revisiting (and a bit more celebration planned) on the 50th North Branch anniversary, a year from now. 

For more fragmentary bits of this history on this blog, check out Nine Stories, After the Miracle, and the Index to Posts on Collaboration and the Human Community.