Paleo Indians: Early Travelers

As the glaciers were retreating, people moved into the area c. 8,000 BC to hunt for mastodon and mammoths at the glacier’s edge. Early people shifted their camps seasonally to be closer to needed reso...

The Potawatomi People

The Potawatomi were the last of a number of Native American tribes to inhabit the local area. They were introduced to the Europeans as the Potawatomi, which roughly translates to “people of the place...

Woodland Period: Evidence of Inhabitants 3,000 Years Ago

The vast majority of artifacts uncovered at the Garrison site are from the Late Archaic and Early Woodland periods, about 1,000 B.C. Several innovations during this period helped to broaden the types...

The Garrison Site: A Significant Archaeological Find in Lake Forest

The Garrison Site is an archaeological site in Lake Forest that was excavated in 1991-1992. It is located north of Westleigh Road near Wallace Road and the Carroll Meadow Nature Preserve and was excav...

Mammoths and Mastodons

Mastodons (Mammut americanum) and woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) were unrelated large elephant-like creatures that roamed Illinois until about 13,000 years ago.The wooly mammoth, more equipped...