Your Forest Preserves

Singing Hills

Singing Hills Forest Preserve serves as an important trail hub for the Millennium Trail, with car and horse trailer parking and a toilet. The trail is open for hiking, biking, cross-country skiing and horseback riding.

Plans for this regional trail were first sketched out during the late 1980s, linking communities and Forest Preserves with existing and potential trail corridors. Using the Des Plaines River as a backbone, the plan calls for the Millennium Trail to curve 35 miles through central, western and northern Lake County. Along the way, it will hook up with other trail systems, including the state's planned Grand Illinois Trail, which will someday stretch 535 miles from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River and back.

The Millennium Trail will eventually spring north to Marl Flat Forest Preserve and then east to the Round Lake bike path. Another leg will join the statewide Grand Illinois Trail, heading west to Moraine Hills State Park and McHenry County.

Currently, 11 miles of multi-purpose trail for hiking, biking, cross-country skiing and horseback riding are open, connecting Lakewood Forest Preserve in Wauconda to Singing Hills Forest Preserve near Volo.

The Forest Preserve Board acquired the original 541-acre "Singing Hills Farm" parcel in September 1997, creating a new Forest Preserve on Fish Lake Road north of Gilmer Road near Volo.

The Preserve name dates back to 1942 when Dan Nelson, Sr., purchased the property as a country retreat for his family. Nelson's son Cliff describes how his father named the site:

"There were so many birds on that land... a Great Blue Heron nest in the trees along the north edge of the farm... pheasants, grouse, songbirds of all kinds. The land was so musical that my father called his farm 'The Singing Hills'."

According to Cliff, his late father's name choice may also have been influenced by an old cowboy song entitled "Singing Hills" from the days of Gene Autry. Cliff Nelson thought his father would have been delighted to know that the name might be retained for posterity. A barn on the property still reads "Singing Hills Farm."

Singing Hills includes 58 acres of natural oak woodlands and 171 acres of high-quality wetlands, with additional farm lands suitable for wildlife habitat restoration.

The Preserve provides protection to Monahan Lake, a wetlands complex that is a documented nesting site for state-endangered sandhill cranes and other waterfowl.