A particularly nasty, bumpy section in the northern half of the Salt Creek Greenway Trail is nasty and bumpy no more, because the City of Wood Dale rebuilt it.
The city in late April quietly laid down new asphalt for about a half mile of the trail through the greenway south of the bridge over Irving Park Road, leaving a nice surprise for bicyclists this spring.
The new, now unstriped asphalt starts at Potter Street — it’ll be plainly obvious — and proceeds straight south for a bit, curves west and then quickly south again to Brookwood Drive. There the path ends and the Salt Creek route continues on streets through a Wood Dale neighborhood. Signs ultimately will direct you to the path off Addison Road.
At the curve to Brookwood, new asphalt also continues to Prospect Avenue. That’s an offshoot that also had been as old and beat up as the previous main trail pavement.
The sign at the curve doesn’t show an arrow telling you to turn left; you have to figure out that the Salt Creek route continues left into the neighborhood.
In contrast, when coming out of that neighborhood heading back north onto the trail, you will see a sign with a right arrow to guide you toward the Irving Park Road bridge.
The lack of arrow on the southbound side was one reason it had been difficult over the years to ride the ever meandering Salt Creek Greenway Trail — I’ve found myself confused on Prospect Avenue and even wound up on nearby Mill Road, giving up on the trail — but the horribly bumpy half mile of path was the far larger problem in this section. Before I wasn’t even sure if the stretch was an official part of the trail, so bad it was; it seemed like it fell under no municipal or county jurisdiction, like an old subdivision path.
Now we don’t have to dread what’s coming after crossing the bridge south over Irving Park Road. That’s the kind of impact this little stretch of new asphalt has.
Responsibility for maintaining the Salt Creek Greenway Trail falls to several agencies. In the DuPage section alone, the City of Wood Dale, the Village of Itasca, the Village of Addison, the Addison Park District, the Elmhurst Park District, the Village of Villa Park, the Village of Oak Brook, and finally the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County have parts to manage.
Such can be the nature of regional trails. The Salt Creek trail runs 25 miles in total from Busse Woods in Cook County to about the Brookfield Zoo, also in Cook County, with the long DuPage segment in the middle.
One remaining rough segment in DuPage County falls to Itasca, and it’s a difficult one anyway. As the northern end of the Salt Creek trail leaves Mittel Blvd. in an Elk Grove Village industrial area, it becomes a path through the Salt Creek Marsh Forest Preserve and passes the Itasca Reservoir. But it must turn west and then run south along Prospect Avenue to get around Spring Brook (like, an actual brook, heading west itself).
The trail becomes bumpy on Prospect Avenue, and riders also must contend with a bridge over the brook, businesses’ driveways, Industrial Drive and even railroad tracks. It’s short, but it always seems like a tricky detour before heading back inland. The Irving Park bridge arrives shortly afterward.
It’s not like the rest of the Salt Creek surface is perfect. Before the Itasca detour, the first southbound stretch of the paved, striped trail shows some wear and tear. Later, south of the new Wood Dale stretch, the trail along Addison Road has some bumps off and on.
Still, the curves and even some trees along Addison Road make for a neat, even scenic ride.
Soon the trail heads southeast into forest — nobody said Salt Creek the actual creek was straight — and we come upon the huge intersection of Villa Avenue and Route 20. We can ride through the Cricket Creek Forest Preserve, then zigzag on streets on either side of Route 83, ride through another forest preserve, and take sidepaths along Roosevelt and York roads before finally coming upon Bemis Woods in Cook County — where the trail is blocked for the Tri-State construction. You have to find another way to Brookfield this year.
Well, at least the new Wood Dale section, small as it is, makes the northern half of the Salt Creek Greenway Trail a lot nicer.
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