OF COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS 



77 



BASEBALL IN THE WOODS (WHEELING PARK). 



Desplaines River 

 Valley Preserve 



Running from Madison street on the south to the county 

 line on the north, twenty miles of primeval mixed hardwood 

 forest from a half to a mile deep on either bank of the Des- 

 plaines river, trailed the entire length by a winding state road 

 that is the Desplaines River Valley Preserve. 



Were all the painting geniuses of the world to submit their 

 ideas of beauty possible in a river valley studded with forestry 

 and were those ideas consolidated in a "valley ideal" it couldn't 

 produce a single suggestion for improvement of this bit of 

 work Nature has handed down to us. 



Indians were alive to the blessings provided for them in 

 this region. One thing that writers of Cook County's early 

 history do agree on is that the Desplaines River valley was 

 the real home of the Pottowatomie Indians generally credited 

 with being the aboriginal inhabitants of "Checaugau." 



