One of Chicago’s most significant natural areas is also in many ways its least natural. There are places in Marian Byrnes Park — 140 acres of woods, wetland and prairie in the Jeffery Manor community on the Southeast Side — where shovels clank against a layer of impenetrable steel slag. Slag, a byproduct of the steelmaking process that hardens into a rock-like form, was once dumped here by the trainload, back in the days when the area’s wetlands were considered a wasteland not worth protecting.
“We’ve tried to do some planting in the slag but we can’t dig into it,” said Lauren Umek, project manager with the Chicago Park District, who’s been leading restoration work at Marian Byrnes for more than a decade. And yet, life finds a way.
There are species uniquely adapted to these “soil” conditions, the same plants found in remnant gravel hill prairies and dolomite prairies. And their seeds, whether blown in by the wind or deposited by birds, have taken root at Marian Byrnes. “Those seeds come in and they do not care. They are totally happy to be growing in this sort of gravelly matrix,” Umek said, pointing to stems of echinacea, clusters of coreopsis and blazing star. “We don’t really know where they came from. But they found a way and when they’re here, they do really well.”
More context: In ecological terms, the slag prairie that’s spontaneously formed at Marian Byrnes is what’s called a “novel ecosystem.”
“This ecosystem doesn’t exist in any textbook. This doesn’t exist in ‘regular’ nature outside of the city,” Umek explained. The singular beauty on display at Marian Byrnes is now more accessible than ever, thanks to new amenities added by the Park District.
Visitors will find a shade pavilion and picnic tables near the entrance off East 103rd Street, and a boardwalk and overlook at the far opposite end of the park, where people can take in a panoramic view of the entire 140 acres. Without activist Marian Byrnes, there’d be no park.
For generations, this patch of wild land — bounded by steel mills, rail lines and expressways — had been a playground for the neighborhood’s kids. The Chicago Transit Authority looked at this same land, back in the 1970s, and saw the perfect location for a bus barn. Byrnes, whose home was adjacent to “the prairie,” fought the development, launching the Committee to Protect the Prairie.
