Ridgemoor Country Club Trail Tree - Chicago, IL - Native American Trail Trees on Waymarking.com

From the club superintendent:

"We have on our grounds a reported Marker tree. This tree, a 2-3 hundred year old burr oak is located near an Indian boundry line. The tree is about 100 feet from our front entrance."

From Early Chicago entry (visit link)
"A good example of a presumptive Indian marker tree can be found on the grounds of the Ridgemoor Country Club in Chicago [see illustration, drawn in 1910 by George E. Colby {93a}]. This burr oak is still alive and healthy [2005], but the horizontal portion of its trunk is now partially buried by later construction of an earthen berm near it. The tree is located close to the northern [see] Indian boundary line and points eastward toward Lake Michigan."

Interestingly, the southern boundary of the club grounds is a NE-SW diagonal street called Forest Preserve Drive, which is contiguous with the old Indian Boundary Line. From Forgotten Chicago (visit link) :

"The Indian Boundary line came about in 1816, when the Fox and Sauk tribes ceded land in a 20 mile corridor to the United States, at the Treaty of St. Louis. The rest of the land outside the boundaries was still owned by Native American tribes until the Chicago Treaty of 1833. There is a corresponding Indian Boundary line 20 miles to the south (in the Calumet region), but its route is only followed by one short street.

Interestingly, while Rogers Avenue and Forest Preserve Drive follow the boundary line, they were never put through as one complete street. Rogers starts and stops about four different times. Forest Preserve Drive is a rather major thoroughfare near the western edge of the city, but it is short and doesn’t connect to Rogers at all."

You are allowed to go on to the grounds to view the tree.

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Date Logged Log User Rating   08/24/2018 AZTech visited it