The Kankaki River State Park, located near the Bourbonnes Illinois Medical Center and the Bourbonne Hospital, is an untouched natural paradise that has been preserved for hundreds of years. First, it was settled by Native Americans who inhabited the region, and then farmers and traders, and today tourists, tourists, cyclists, fishermen, hunters and kayakers. The Kankaki River, a naturally flowable stream, registered by the Federal Net Flow Register, is the center of popularity of the park.
One of the popular attractions of the 1890s was the Custer Bauer Amusement Park, which welcomed guests from Chicago. The park went through the First World War, but by that time the river had already become a popular place to give. The place became more accessible for holidaymakers when the roads were built along both banks of the river in 1928. Ten years later, Chicago Ethel Sturges Dummer donated thirty-five acres of land to create a state park. The Commonwealth of Edison added nearly two thousand acres to the park in 1956 and provided further land to the park in 1989. Currently, the Kankaki River State Park contains about 4,000 acres and converts both banks of the Kankaki River to eleven miles and is bounded by Illinois Route 113 on the south side and Illinois Route 102 in the north. Interstates 55 and 57 provide convenient access to the park from the local communities of Kankakee, Bradley and Bourbonnes.
A number of prehistoric sites are located in the Kankaki River State Park. Native American Indians from the region at the time when the first Europeans arrived in the 1670s were Miami and the Illini Indians. Miami was a larger group, so the Kankaki River was originally named the Miami River. Mascouten and Kickapoo also inhabited the region from the end of 1670 until the year of 1760 and the Potawatomi Indians did not hunt in this area to a later date. By 1770, the region was dominated by the countries of Potawatomi, Chippewa and Ottawa, known as the Three Fires. The largest village was known as Rock Village and was located in a modern park near the mouth of Rock Creek. In 1832, after the Black Hawk War, Potawatomi was forced to cede all their lands, which lay along the Kankaki and Illinois rivers, to the US government. Most of Potawatomi left the area, with the exception of the chief Show-wow-us-view, whose tomb is marked by a boulder that lies along the Rock Creek nature trail.
In the 1820s, the French fur professions, including Noel Le Wasser, Hubbard Chabare, and François Bourbonne, traded with Potawatomi, who lived along the Iroquois and Kankaki rivers. When Potavatomi left the region in 1838, Le Wasser called on French Canadians from Quebec to emigrate to the area of the Bourbonnai village. So he deserved the name "Father Kankakee." William Baker and other settlers also began to grow the valley of the Kankaki River in 1831, and the log house village of Rockville was founded in 1840. Kankakee and Iroquois Navigation Co. were chartered in 1847 to provide a navigable waterway from Illinois and the Michigan Canal to Warner Landing to date, Warner Bridge Rd. This company went bankrupt when the Wabash railway passed in the early 1880s. Limestone cushions still stand on Chippev Campsite, where a railway bridge was to be discovered before the money ran out of the railway.
