WHAT IS A WATER TRAIL

A water trail is a creek or river or lake shore with several places where a paddler can put in or take out a canoe or kayak. These access points have interpretive signage that provides clear and accurate guidance to the paddler, so that he or she knows what to expect along the route and what level of experience is necessary to traverse the route.

Water trails can be shallow or deep, mud and waste bottomed, or rocky, sandy, or clay based, with fast or slow currents, and with obstacles that can be bypassed with reasonable ease or with difficulty. Creeks and rivers can be channelized straight for miles or meander with constant turns. The conditions on a water trail can change as quickly as the weather, with stormwater runoff or wind conditions creating the need for a greater level of experience very quickly. Creeks and rivers can have 2-foot shallow banks or 10 to 20-foot cliff-like banks. Water can also vary in terms of quality, from relatively clean waters to varying degrees of pollution, requiring a related response from the paddler in terms of hygiene. Mishaps on a creek, river, or lake can happen in isolated areas, and emergency response is more difficult, making self-reliance an important skill for a paddler.

But, in other states, popular, well-utilized water trails feature ocean shorelines with inaccessible rocky cliffs, Class IV and Class V rapids, 500-mile routes, or tidal estuaries. In an increasing number of water trails, paddlers with spinal cord injuries, paralyzed below the waist, are equal to any other experienced paddler on the water. Paddling, being a mode of transportation for tens of thousands of years might even be hard-wired in all of us because of the ease by which paddling skills can be learned. Northwest Indiana’s creek, river, and lakefront waters were paddled by uncounted generations of travelers and in many stretches, are easier to paddle today than in the past.

Paddling routes through Northwestern Indiana were well known to European commercial interests, Jesuit missionaries in France, Montreal and Quebec trappers and traders, east coast Colonial militias, and the fledgling American government after the War for Independence. The Kankakee River, the Calumet River and its tributaries, and the Lake Michigan shoreline routes were on every map of this era. During the earliest years of settlement by the first local traders, and then, emigrant farmers and businesspeople from the east, the largest local creeks were immediately mapped to attract and establish the same commercial pattern of settlement that had occurred in new lands immediately west of the Appalachians. Mid-sized streams were important for moving commodities, operating millsites, and inspiring canal schemes to interconnect the bigger waterways. By the 1830s, West Creek, Cedar Creek, Deep River, Salt Creek, Coffee Creek, Eagle Creek, and Turkey Creek were all mapped, named, and marketed to incoming settlers. Even Lake George (the current site of Schoon Ditch and Cady Marsh Ditch) was noted on early maps as “water from 1-8 feet deep.” Canals were envisioned, but financing never appeared, for routes from the Calumet River at Lake Station to Valparaiso and downstream to the Kankakee, from the Calumet River to Cedar Lake, and downstream to the Kankakee, and from Trail Creek to the Little Kankakee and downstream to the Kankakee.

But times and transportation technology changed, giving way to wagon road systems, railroads, and, most recently, car and truck routes. The creeks and rivers always remained as trapping and hunting grounds: a place for the local community to picnic and swim, for kids to spend their free time chasing critters, rafting, or otherwise exploring. The creeks gained enormous additional levels of stormwater discharge as fields were tiled, wetlands drained, and creeks channelized. In the Kankakee basin, as crops became more valuable than water, most stormwater was shipped downstream to the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers and finally the Gulf of Mexico. In the Lake Michigan basin in the lower reaches of the Calumet River watershed, with its almost flat topography, stormwater often stayed in place, much to the chagrin of rapidly developing neighborhoods, and the creek channels became dumping grounds for rapidly growing industry. In the past 30 years, enormous investments have been made to clean up the Calumet River system and limit its floodwater damage. Recreational boating has become an enormous industry in its own right. New development is refocusing on waterfront properties as an asset, rather than the detriment much of it was during the 20th century. The general public is much more aware of the benefits and is demanding progress toward clean creeks, rivers, and lakes. The opportunity to return to paddling experiences couldn’t be more timely.