Use of the Marsh

According to local legend, the Potawatomi who lived in the area called the Skokie Marsh “che-wab-skokie” – big wet prairie.  Potawatomi and other Great Lakes Native American tribes had been using the marsh for hunting, fishing, and harvesting plants for hundreds of years before white settlers arrived in the 1840s.

Like the Native Americans, the early settlers hunted and fished on the Skokie Marsh.  But they also used the marsh in other ways that changed the landscape.  Settlers harvested peat to burn for heating, grazed their animals on the grasslands, and planted the fertile soil with hay and vegetables.

In an effort to lessen the spring floods, local residents established a drainage district in the 1860s and dug a ditch from the south end of the marsh in Winnetka southeast through Kenilworth to empty into the lake.  This channel and other small-scale drainage efforts altered the ecology of the marsh, causing it to dry out faster in the summer and fall, leading to fires and dust storms.