I decided to check out Salt Creek to see if it would be a good place to take the family to paddle. It's the closest water to our home. Short answer - No. Here's why.

The following evaluation details the physical pros and cons of the paddle which would enable you to decide if the creek is OK for you and your boat. But, the primary deciding factor is your nose and your level of squeamishness. In a word, the creek stinks. There is a not-so-faint odor of sewage at all times. In fact, as you drive near the creek on neighborhood streets, you can tell by your nose when the creek is close by. If you can't handle the idea of dipping your feet, hands, paddle, etc. in water that smells of the outflow of several upstream sewage treatment plants, then paddle elsewhere.

I put in at the Brookfield canoe launch. It can be found at the NW corner of the parking lot behind the city administration and police building. This building is on the east side of the creek, and the north side of Brookfield Ave. The launch was built around 1985 when they had a mayor who was a canoeist. It doesn't appear to have enjoyed much loving care since.

The launch is not a good one. It is a very steep, 12' embankment with some concrete posts laid horizontally to form steps and spiked into the ground with pieces of rebar. When the creek is at its normal, summer level, there is a two foot drop from the edge of the bank to the water. There are large rocks and some chunks of broken concrete in the water right at the edge where you'll want to put your boat for boarding. Good luck.

Once you're on the water though, it's mostly a good paddle upstream, except for the bridges, as far as Brezina / Westchester Woods. After you pass under the IHB RR (Indiana Harbor Belt RR) bridge, the creek widens and there are too many shallow spots for enjoyable paddling. I had to exit the kayak and pull it through the rocky shallows four times in about a half mile. I gave up and turned back downstream just short of the LaGrange Rd. bridge.

Starting north from Brookfield, the Washington Ave. bridge was OK, I was able to paddle under it. There was a sight gauge painted on the west end that was rather funny. The water was at about a foot below 0 on the gauge. Just before the zoo, in a forested area on the East bank, I saw two buck deer with nice racks. They were not behind a fence in the zoo, but wandering freely along the bank. That was cool. I then passed the remains of bridge supports at Monroe Ave. No problem there.

Paddling alongside the zoo was interesting, several people waved to me. There were two small bridges on this stretch, one an abandoned trolley bridge (I was told by a Brookfield police officer) and the other a maintenance bridge for the zoo that leads to the garbage dumpster pickup area. I learned this from a couple of zoo maintenance guys who were crossing the bridge in a golf cart as I approached.

There was construction taking place at the 31st St bridge and I found a dam made of sandbags just south of it. Fortunately, there was a gap in the bags near the west bank which made a nice, deep chute to paddle through.

Some distance north of 31st St. I came upon an odd thing. On the east bank is a very large spillway letting water OUT of the creek. It's approach was somewhat blocked by trees and branches that had floated down, but it was allowing a significant amount of water to leave the creek such that paddling near it would definitely be hazardous to your health. It's a flood control cutoff to the DesPlaines river. It can be explored from the down river end, but the high likelihood of blockage (strainers) would make it very dangerous to enter from the up river end as proved by the amount of branches and debris that can be seen in the picture. Don't want to go there.

You can see it clearly on Google Maps if you follow the Salt just northwest of Brookfield Zoo where the Salt and the DesPlaines loop very near each other. The entrance on the Salt can be seen directly west of the northwest corner of the giant zoo parking lot. Look straight east to the DesPlaines and you can see the outflow end of the tunnel.

Once past that, it was an easy paddle to the 17th Ave. (Maple Ave.) bridge were I had to drag the boat over lots of rocks and debris. Then easy paddling to the 25th Ave. (Kemman Ave.) bridge and another boat drag. Just west of 25th Ave. is the IHB RR (Indiana Harbor Belt RR) bridge which is rusting into scrap even as trains cross it. There was a train just leaving the bridge as I approached and I could see cross braces that had rusted loose on one end, dancing to the vibration of the train. The bridge needs some serious help.

Beyond that bridge, I began to hit shallow riffles every 100 yards or so. After the fourth drag over rocks, I got tired of it and turned around short of the LaGrange Rd. bridge. All the while from the IHB RR bridge to my turnaround, I could hear a monster stereo blasting away in Westchester Woods on the North bank. Somebody was serenading the whole park.

The return was easy, except for dragging the boat under the 25th and 17th Ave. bridges again. The take out was a major drag, as I was tired and it was up that steep bank.

I saw a surprising amount of wildlife. In addition to the two bucks at the beginning, I saw a large turtle basking on a fallen tree, a Great Blue heron, a hawk, several ducks, lots of fish jumping and, at the very end, a muskrat. I also saw much less garbage than I expected. I only saw four beer and/or soda bottles floating during the whole time. There was very little junk given the distance I traveled, a few tires, a rusted grocery cart, some trash caught in the low branches from the last big rain, some plywood and a couple of street construction signs. I expected the banks to be lined with junk but it wasn't too bad. The Brookfield officer told me a group does a summer cleanup each year and they had done it recently, so I probably saw it at its best.

In all but one category, I truly believe that Salt Creek could be made a very nice paddling place with a little work. Clear a path through the debris under the bridges, pick up the garbage, cut back a few fallen trees and build a few decent launching sites. All this could be done by volunteer groups in the surrounding communities with help from area paddling organizations. Somebody with lots of free time on their hands would be needed to organize it.

The show stopper is, of course, the sewer smell. Given our present economic and political state, I see no way to make the creek a more pleasant place to paddle. The cost of tightening up on the communities that dump into the creek and continuing to monitor them would be prohibitive. I confess to living in one of the offending towns, Elmhurst. We and Villa Park have large treatment plants on the west bank along Rte. 83, south of St. Charles Rd. The smell there, as you drive by on 83, is the smell I endured miles downstream in Brookfield. There is a total of 19 municipalities whose sanitation plants empty into the creek. If it weren't for this outflow, Salt Creek wouldn't be much more than a trickle among the rocks. This is why the smell is so much worse than, for example, the West Branch of the DuPage - because there isn't enough natural flow to dilute the sanitation outflow. You have to take the bad with the good. Without the sanitation outflow, you couldn't paddle the creek.

Given all of the above, I'm not enthusiastic about paddling Salt Creek again. There's more pleasant water in the West Branch of the DuPage. For better paddling, I'll have to drive much farther from home.

Update, Fall 2005

Prairie State Canoeists sponsored a Salt Creek paddle combined with a water quality seminar. There's a short report that's worth reading.

Update, Fall 2006

They did another paddle in 2006 with better results.

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