Two Fox River Parks: Heesakker Park and the 1000 Islands Environmental Center
It was one of those easy early-August afternoons, low 80s and blue sky, the kind of day that makes staying inside feel like a waste. So I didn’t. I picked out two parks I had been meaning to walk, both of them sitting right on the Fox River, and made an afternoon of it. First stop was Heesakker Park in Little Chute, and from there I drove up the river to the 1000 Islands Environmental Center in Kaukauna.
Heesakker Park, Little Chute
Heesakker Park is about 26 acres of woods on the Fox River, right where one of the old locks and dams sits. It is named for the Heesakker family, who bought the land from the Green Bay and Mississippi Canal Company back in 1916. They gave it to the village of Little Chute in 1958, and the park was dedicated to the family in 1983.
The locks are the reason to come here, at least for me. The Fox River lock system goes all the way back to the 1850s, when the canal, dam, and locks were first built to move barge traffic around the river’s drops. Commercial shipping on the river wound down in the late 1950s, and the whole system was officially closed in the 1980s, but it has been restored for recreation since. Heesakker is one of the stops on Loop the Locks, a 13-mile trail that ties together five Fox Valley communities: Appleton, Combined Locks, Kaukauna, Kimberly, and Little Chute. There is a footbridge here that crosses the channel over toward Island Park, and you can walk right out over the water.
That first photo is me standing on that bridge, with the lock and the little lock-tender’s house behind me. I don’t take many pictures of myself, but the light was good and the view was worth it. Somebody had scratched “LOVER BOY” into the railing, which I’ll go ahead and take as a compliment.
Down along the water the wildflowers were going strong. Tall teasel with its spiky seed heads, and thistle in full purple bloom, all of it crowded right up to the rocky edge of the channel. Then, walking the wooded part of the trail, I came around a corner and found a little collection of painted mushroom houses sitting out on a tree stump. Fairy houses, gnome houses, whatever you want to call them. Somebody had made them by hand and just left them out in the open for people to find: red caps with white spots, one in teal, one in purple, tiny painted doors and windows and flowers. No sign, no explanation, just a bit of somebody’s kindness left on a stump in the woods. I liked that a lot. There was also a bed of purple coneflowers still going strong in the heat, their orange centers standing up like pincushions.
The 1000 Islands Environmental Center, Kaukauna
From Little Chute it is a short drive up the river to Kaukauna and the 1000 Islands Environmental Center. If you have never been, it is about 350 acres of river bottom and woods with more than seven miles of trails running through it, and it is free and open year-round. There is a nature center with live animals, hands-on displays, and even a collection of arrowheads found along the Fox River. The land is a real haven for wildlife: deer, rabbits, and squirrels, plus nesting eagles, herons, owls, and all kinds of ducks and songbirds.
The first thing I noticed was how low the river was. Very low. Whole stretches of the bed were sitting out in the open, wide gravel bars and flat shelves of rock and old concrete that are normally under water, with just a shallow, glassy channel running down the middle of it. It made for some strange, pretty scenery, all those rocks and reflections, but it is also a good reminder of how dry it has been.
The highlight, though, was the deer. I came around a bend and there it was, a young white-tailed deer standing dead still in the brush along the bank, half-hidden behind a tangle of branches, watching me. We looked at each other for a good while. I got a couple of frames before it decided it had had enough of me and slipped off into the trees. That is the deer at the top of this post.
The deer was not the only one who held still for the camera. A Canada goose stood out in the shallows long enough for a straight-on portrait, its reflection sitting right underneath it, and a little raft of ducks paddled by a bit later. At one point I stopped and looked straight up into the canopy, all that green lit from behind, with spiderwebs strung between the branches catching the light. There was burdock going to seed along the trail too, the kind that grabs onto your socks if you get too close.
Two parks, one river, one very good afternoon. Both of these are worth your time if you are anywhere near the Fox Valley, and they sit only about ten minutes apart on the same stretch of the Fox River. I’ll be heading back to the 1000 Islands center once the water comes back up, just to see how different the same spot looks.
Some of these photos, the deer at the 1000 Islands center included, are now in my photo guessing game, Where in the Fox Cities? See if you can tell Heesakker from Kaukauna.
