Argonne at 50

Argonne reforestation project changes DuPage landscape

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 16, 1996) -- People who grew up on the wide-open farmlands of southwestern DuPage County during the 1930s and `40s would find little today to remind them of their childhood.

More than one million pine trees stand tall across several hundred acres of that former farmland -- now the site of the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve.

When the laboratory took up residence on the site just outside of Lemont in 1948, it was a patchwork of properties purchased by the federal government from local farmers.

It soon became evident, however, that 100 years of farming had robbed the soil of vital nutrients and left it unprotected from the erosion caused by heavy rainfall and the runoff of melting snow. Harmful species of weeds also presented a problem across the site. Argonne conceived and developed a reforestation project to help protect and nourish the damaged land.

On March 16, 1953, the first red, jack and white pine seedlings were planted. By month's end, 480,000 trees had been planted along Bailey Road, 91st Street, Bluff Road and the laboratory's east area.

Pines were chosen for their hardiness and their ability to grow in a wide variety of soil conditions. As they matured, the seedlings would quickly lace the ground with networks of roots, protecting the soil from erosion.

As the trees grew taller and increased their spread, weeds would be denied sunlight and would gradually disappear.

Once full grown, the trees would shed their needles on the ground -- an excellent source of organic matter to replenish the soil's natural elements -- and would make good wind and snow fences.

Planting continued in 1954 and ended in the spring of 1955 with more than one million trees planted on 1,500 acres of land. Fields of grass and weeds had been replaced by large groves of pines and smaller groves of soft maple, green ash, sycamore, black walnut, tulip poplar and red gum trees.

Argonne's ecologists also hoped that the forest cover provided by the pines would in time prove a beneficent host for the air-borne seeds of native hardwoods, including oaks.

By 1969, the sturdy pines stood well over 20 feet tall, and the landscape was, indeed, dotted with brighter green hardwood trees rising above the darker conifers.

In the early 1970s, several hundred acres of the laboratory's land was made available as federal surplus land, including areas that had been part of the reforestation project. In 1973, as part of the Great Legacy of Parks Program, the DuPage County Forest Preserve District was chosen to receive 2,222 acres of Argonne land, which was added to the Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve.

Today, Argonne's 1,500-acre site is nestled in the middle of Waterfall Glen -- a 2,433-acre preserve that is the largest of the forest district's 36 preserves. And the pine trees that began life as seedlings about the size of a lead pencil 36 years ago continue to flourish on both sites, providing a peaceful, verdant setting for the lab's high-tech research.

For further information, please contact Donna Jones (708/252-5501 or media@anl.gov) at Argonne.