Old Plank Road - Joilet, IL
Posted by: Metro2
N 41° 31.404 W 088° 00.874
16T E 415351 N 4597358
This old plank road is over 150 years old ...but is now a 21 mile recreation trail. This site posts the 18.5 mile marker.
Waymark Code: WMBQB7
Location: Illinois, United States
Date Posted: 06/12/2011
Views: 4
This access point on the trail is located at the trail's intersection with E. Washington Street in Joliet.
The Trail's webpage (
visit link) has an extensive history that begins:
"The Old Plank Road Trail has seen lots of changes over the past 150 years. Before 1850 it was a major communication, trading and transportation corridor for Native Americans and the occasional missionary, fur trader, trapper, or explorer.
Since 1850 it's been an emigration route for European settlers looking for land to settle on. It's also a communication and transportation hub for our modern society. The OPRT area is a railroad corridor, the route of oil and gas pipelines, Chicago's link to the electric distribution grid, a crossroad of Interstate traffic, and the home of microwave, copper and fiber optic networks that link the nation with Internet, telephone and television services.
Now the trail is a recreation and nature preserve but there's plenty of evidence along the right-of-way of other and older uses."