Backwater lakes drained for farm fields, now restored

Prior to 2001 (top), Hennepin & Hopper was farmed with corn and soybeans. Drainage pumps and ditches kept the land dry enough to support crops. By 2004 (bottom) lakes, prairies, fens, and seeps once again occupy the Hennepin & Hopper floodplain.

In 1850 a young Irish immigrant from Chicago was walking to Peoria looking for work. In Hennepin—about 40 miles short of his destination—he stopped to rest and ended up staying awhile. So did three generations of his descendents.

Patrick Dore and his family became the largest landowners around the nearby Hennepin and Hopper lakes in the fertile floodplain of the Illinois River.

The Dores did what every self-respecting landowner in the early 20th century did-they “improved” the land by draining it. With their neighbors in the floodplain, they formed a drainage and levee district, built levees and installed pumps. The result was a 2,600-acre oasis of corn and soybeans for most of the century.

In 2000, the Wetlands Initiative approached the Dores and the eight other landowners in the district, suggesting that Patrick Dore’s early view of the landscape could become the inspiration for the 21st century landscape.

Farming was now only barely profitable even in a good year, due in large part to the high cost of operating the pumps and maintaining the levee. Most of the landowners readily agreed to sell.

By April 2001 the Wetlands Initiative turned off the pumps and watched approximately 1,000 acres go under water within weeks. Soon dormant seeds of aquatic vegetation-seeds that had been buried under farm fields for 80 years-sprang to life.

Within weeks, water filled approximately 1,000 acres of the site and native flora and fauna began to return, including the long-dormant Sago pondweed, which began to flourish immediately from a seedbank long buried under the site’s row crops.

In the following years, TWI planted more than 160,000 plant plugs and spread seeds of more than 400 native plants (click here for a map of the site's many habitat areas). Other restoration work has included invasive species removal, mowing, and burning.

The successful restoration gathered accolades to the site. Robyn Thorson, former regional head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in fall 2003. “This is absolutely breathtaking—one of the foremost wetland restoration sites I’ve seen in the Midwest region.”

In 2005, the project was dedicated as the Sue & Wes Dixon Waterfowl Refuge in recognition of the high-quality habitat present at the site.