Hiking Giant City State Park in Illinois

Located in the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois, Giant City State Park offers outdoor lovers camping, horseback riding, hiking, archery, rock climbing, rappelling, and fishing. After a week together on a volunteer trail building crew, Carol, Diane, Jane, and I decided to hike the mile-long loop trail before heading back to our respective homes, and we wanted to see how the state park got its name.

The park derives its name from apparent "streets" that take hikers through chasms between sandstone bluffs formed 12,000 years ago, all the size of buildings, as if the "street" were in a city made by and for giants.

Lush moss, ferns, flowering mints, hundreds of species of wildflowers, and more than 75 varieties of towering trees add color to the sandstone bluffs that dominate the terrain.

One does indeed feel small while within this city seemingly built by and for giants.

"Fat man squeeze" was closed. Apparently slim people actually climb into and then up this tiny fissure, popping out atop the rock bluff. But this area is also popular with rattlesnakes and copperheads which are now looking for a place to hibernate -- not a good time to go in there and disturb them!

One area has graffiti from the 1800s laboriously carved into the rock. Today's "artists" have it much easier with their spray cans (which is strictly forbidden of course) and these carvings are considered archeological artifacts and not graffiti. This reminded me of my two canoe trips down Utah's Green River where we've stopped at a place called Registry Rock to see the carvings by the early pioneers.

The sandstone was formed 250 million years ago as sandbars and dunes in a great river delta. Earthquakes (the Madrid Fault is nearby) have uplifted, cracked, and crumpled the earth to form the Shawnee Hills as well as these bluffs with their giant fissures and cracks. Erosion by wind and water of the softer rock and the results of slightly acidic rainwater have all combined to create these "streets" through the rocks.

Lichens and mosses slowly covered the rock surfaces and then they died and became soil for ferns, herbaceous plants, and trees.

Of course, the early pioneers had never seen skyscrapers, so these sheer bluffs must have seemed like the "streets of a giant" to them and hence the name they gave the area. These walls provided protection from wind and weather, but remember, back in those days, Illinois still had black bears and mountain lions hunting in these hills, and the critters no doubt liked these areas too.

Balanced rock, though weighing tons, seems to have slid downhill and gotten stuck in this location, likely thousands of years ago during the glacial melting.

Here's a shot of Balanced Rock from another angle...

People have occupied this land for 12.000 years and no doubt Native Americans and others have used the caves as shelter from weather and predators.

Chiseled steps and flagstone borders can be seen on the trail, all the result of the hard work of three Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) companies -- hundreds of young men who worked in the park in the 1930s, building shelters and the state park's lodge building seen below, as well as erosion walls, embankments for the creek, steps, bridges, and miles of nature trails. The next two photos show the lodge they built. Oh yeah -- the park's restaurant is famous for its chicken all-you-can-eat dinners on Fridays and Sundays. I ate here 20 years ago when I was here backpacking with my sons, and our trail construction group ate here on Friday after our week of trail construction was done. Great meals both times I was here!

The lobby of the lodge...