In Lake Zurich, there exists a group of environmentalists whose goal is to return the land to somewhere close to its Pristine state before the settlers came, with their buckthorn and garlic mustard and their cultivated wheat. When Illinois became a state in 1818, it was known for its fertile land and Oak groves. Today's landscape is vastly different from the land that was here when the Indians managed the soil. In the 1700s, it was said that a gray squirrel could travel from the Atlantic coast west 1000 miles across the trees without touching the ground. While no one knew of the land that extended beyond Ohio, there were many rumors about the expanses of prairie and open sky dotted with wooded groves of oaks.

The land that met adventurers from Europe along the Eastern seaboard was a large extending forest- a land rich in wood. Wherever they had come from, there was not as much wood as there was in the America. Any land that might exist beyond the forest was left to the French and Spanish explorers.

It was the French who gave the prairies their name. They were amazed when the land began to change from forest to open air and grass. By the time they reached Illinois, the land stretched before them in a vast sea of plains, the likes of which they had never seen. Some explorers hated it. They described the land as a 'barren wasteland' or 'a great treeless land', but some were impressed with the beauty of the open prairie flecked with patches of trees. Louis Joliet considered it a magic environment, "no better soil can be found, on the day of his arrival a settler could put his plow to land." This would be a great advantage compared to the Eastern forests which must he cleared first, then plowed.

Between 1700 and 1776, the population along the Atlantic swelled to overflowing and the colonists began to move west. When word spread about the rich farmland and the unbroken sky, it was only a matter of time before the homesteaders would arrive. The Indians who occupied the land considered it to be theirs only temporarily, and they treated the earth with great respect. They used fire to control the prairie, and they took only what they needed in natural resources.

John Madison, a writer who specializes in prairies, has said that the natural fight between prairie and woodland that existed for centuries met its match when the white man came. Settlers forever altered the landscape by clearing the prairie and allowing more trees to grow.

Today the movement for prairie restoration is growing. In Lake Zurich, there are groups who work to protect the remaining prairie lands, to reintroduce the prairie grasses and flowers seen by the first settlers moving west from Ohio. The goal is to return the open land back to the vast sea of wildflowers and grasses that once crossed our state.