Bliss Woods Forest Preserve just got bigger. The Kane County Forest Preserve District closed on October 7 on roughly 33 acres along Bliss Road in Sugar Grove Township, paying $545,985, or about $16,500 per acre, for land that includes part of the historic woodland that gave the town of Sugar Grove its name nearly two centuries ago.
The new addition sits along the preserve's eastern section and brings Bliss Woods to about 268 acres, according to the Chicago Tribune. The tract includes intact forest-floor wildflowers and massive oaks, and its acquisition adds protection for a woodland with trees dating back hundreds of years. Forest Preserve District President Bill Lenert said the purchase advances the mission to protect local nature and provide more green spaces for everyone to enjoy, per the Tribune's reporting.
The Woods That Named a Town
The newly acquired parcel includes the core of the woods that gave Sugar Grove its name in 1834, when a 500-acre woodland in the area was dubbed for its abundance of sugar maples. The grove was known to Indigenous people as Sin-qua-sip, meaning “sugar grove,” and served for generations as a maple sugar camp, the same report notes. A little more than half of that historic grove still exists today.
Piecing it back together took time. The western portion of the woods has been protected for almost 100 years, while the eastern stretch has carried protection since 1985. The southern core, however, remained unprotected for decades. After decades of gun-club use, the parcel had been privately owned since 2020, leaving the namesake woodland split between public preservation and private ownership until this month's closing.
Old Growth Spared From the Chainsaw
Benjamin Haberthur of the forest preserve district said the parcels hold some of the oldest forest still in existence in Kane County, noting the land has never been plowed and that mature oak, maple and ash trees retain a forest structure dating back hundreds of years, according to the Tribune. He said the district is uniquely positioned to protect the woods and remediate the land, adding that other potential buyers would have needed an economic return to justify the cleanup costs and likely would have removed the trees.
That framing underscores what was at stake: the Tribune's reporting indicates the Bliss Woods trees were under threat before the acquisition and would have been lost without public support for the forest preserve district. The district's broader acquisition muscle has been bolstered by a Shaw Local report that Kane County voters approved a Forest Preserve District levy increase referendum in November 2024, expected to generate roughly $5.7 million annually for open space acquisition, habitat preservation, and preserve maintenance.
A Property's Contaminated Past
The land sold to the district had been privately owned since 2020, after decades of use by the gun club. Two small areas within the new acquisition require remediation because of lead contamination, and those areas will be fenced off until funding — likely through grants — becomes available for cleanup. The rest of the new addition will be open for public use, per the Tribune.
The gun club's history with lead contamination near Bliss Woods stretches back over a decade. The Illinois Attorney General's office filed an $18 million lawsuit against the Aurora Sportsmen's Club in July 2014 over lead shot contamination spanning 2.5 acres of Bliss Woods Forest Preserve and nearby Blackberry Creek, stemming from years of target shooting, according to the Daily Herald. State inspectors had documented visible lead shot near the creek at the time.
The club settled that lawsuit in March 2015, agreeing to pay nearly $15,000 in fines and to submit an Illinois EPA cleanup and monitoring plan for the contaminated sections, the Daily Herald reported separately. The club had moved its shooting operations to Waterman about five years before the 2014 report.
An Esker, a Trail, and Decades of Growth
Bliss Woods was established in 1928, making it Kane County's second-oldest forest preserve, and it contains the last remnant of the Kaneville Esker — a glacial ridge created by water flowing beneath a melting glacier roughly 13,000 years ago. Most of the esker elsewhere has been destroyed by years of gravel mining, though a 70-acre section within Bliss Woods carries Illinois State Nature Preserve status, protecting more than 280 recorded plant species, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
The preserve also includes an 18-acre wetland basin north of Kedeka Road, and the Virgil-Gilman Bike Trail runs east and west through the property, connecting Bliss Woods with Hannaford Woods-Nickels Farm Forest Preserve and Waubonsee Community College to the northwest. Volunteers work regularly to restore and maintain the land, and portions carry the state nature preserve designation that offers permanent legal protection.
The Forest Preserve District of Kane County manages more than 23,000 acres across nearly 100 properties countywide. The district has used past voter-approved funding, including a $50 million land acquisition referendum in April 2017, to expand other holdings. Sauer Family Prairie Kame Forest Preserve includes a 71.48-acre addition.
