Thanks to the Glacial Age, the Tri-Cities possesses three areas rarely found in one locale: Nelson Lake Marsh in Batavia and St. Charles` Murray Prairie and Norris Woods.
What makes them special is that you can still see the glacier`s effect on the topography. More important, each retains much of the same flora and fauna indigenous to the land in the mid-1800s because it was not economically feasible to farm or develop any of these properties.
Picture the Tri-Cities area covered with ice about 10,000 years ago. Though a glacier`s various parts travel at different speeds, it generally moves slowly and, like the flow of a river, its velocity is greater in the center than near the edges. So the glacier melts faster than it moves forward.
The glacier traveled from north to south, in a path parallel to Lake Michigan, says naturalist Jon Duerr of the Kane County Forest Preserve Commission. ”As the glacier melted away to the east, the Fox River emerged.” At the terminus of glacial activity, the melting ice deposited such materials as gravel and sand in the form of ridges and mounds. These became Minooka Moraine on the east side of the Tri-Cities and St. Charles Moraine on the west side, Duerr says. The moraines stretch from McHenry to Yorkville.
