Perhaps the most dramatic species present within the refuge are the
bald cypress and water tupelo trees that are declared to make up the
oldest living stand of trees east of the Mississippi River. Core samples
show that the largest cypress trees are well over 1,000 years old. The
largest has a circumference of 31 feet and a height of 95 feet, one of 12
in the area that the state has designated as champion trees. Surprising,
too, is that these trees are living at the northern most point in their
range. Surveys have revealed that at least 400 plants of every type
continue to survive within the Cache River floodplain.
Life is a little easier now for the trees than it was 20 years ago. . .
When I was 12 years old, I thought there was no end to the bottomland
forests around Belknap. But, as I wandered a little farther each year, it
came to me that the woods and swamps didn't just go on and on. This
bothered me a little, but still, there seemed to be a lot of "wild"
country left.
Then in the 1950s and 1960s, I watched the bulldozers move in and begin
clearing bottomland on a grand scale. It took a while for me to comprehend
what was happening. Entire sections of timberland were cleared in a single
summer. It was with sadness that I watched cypress swamps like Turkey
Pond, where I killed my first fox squirrel, disappear. It was also quite a
shock to see how small it looked as a soybean field."
Max Hutchison, an
ecologist with the Natural Land Institute, wrote these words in 1984 in
the preface of a plan to preserve the swamps of the lower Cache River in
southern Illinois. The time had come to preserve and protect the remnants
of what was, including over 1,000-year old cypress trees, 251 species of
birds and more than 100 species of threatened and endangered species
listed by federal and state authorities. One result was the creation of
Cypress Creek NWR. Another was for the refuge, Illinois Department of
Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy, and Ducks Unlimited to pool
their resources and enter an agreement to safeguard 60,000 acres along 50
miles of this tributary of the Ohio River near its confluence with the
Mississippi.
Like so many other river valleys, the Cache was seen as a natural
resource offering fertile soils and mature harvestable timber. But a huge
problem faced the first settlers of the valley: when the Ohio River
flooded, so did the Cache bottomlands. Farmers were losing two crops of
every three because of floods. Thus started a series of stream
channelizations, dammings, and levee placements. Landowners succeeded in
draining sizeable cleared areas by speeding runoffs to tributary streams
as early as the 1850s. Other major alterations occurred in the 20th
century under the auspices of the Cache Creek Drainage District including
construction of the Post Creek Cutoff in 1915, a ditch that diverted water
from the Cache River to the Ohio River some 55 miles from the real mouth
of the Cache. Then in 1950, the original mouth of the Cache was bypassed
by a shortcut ditch that emptied the lower Cache directly into the
Mississippi, reducing the river by some 20 miles.
The Cache had effectively become two rivers: its upper basin with
slopes reaching 15 feet per mile, extensively drained for agriculture, and
the lower basin with less than one foot of fall per mile where standing
water still predominated. But the changes in the lower Cache River were
nevertheless extraordinary. River flows can now be in either direction,
depending on water levels. Runoff from uplands that once took days to
reach the lowlands now arrive in hours. The faster moving water brought
with it phenomenal amounts of silt. Sedimentation was as much as 12 inches
in a year. Trees were being undercut by bank erosion and others were
smothered by water pushed up by rising silt layers, thereby also reducing
water-holding capacities of the wetlands. Estimates are that only one
thousandth of the remaining swamp could be considered to be undisturbed
since pre-settlement days.
Cypress Creek NWR
RR 1 Box 53D
Ullin, IL 62992
(618) 634-2231
Cache River State Natural Area
930 Sunflower Lane
Belknap, IL 62908
(618) 634-9678
Directions: From exit 18 on I-57, east 6 miles on Route 7 (Shawnee College
Road) to Shawnee Community College on right. Bear right to building
complex containing refuge office.