Purchased during the Kendall County development boom, Openlands Land Preservation acted quickly and creatively to secure 400 forested acres with more than a mile of Fox River frontage in Yorkville, Illinois.
"We had a lot of pressure to develop this," said Art Prochaska, then mayor of Yorkville, who went to the Hoover Boy Scout Camp as a child and still considers it a special place. "Some people wanted to build homes; others demanded a golf course. But I knew we had something unique. Yorkville will soon surround this land, and we’ll have a beautiful mature forest in the heart of our city.”
Openlands Land Preservation purchased the camp in stages, allowing the Kendall County Forest Preserve District to assemble funding to buy the property over a three-year period.