If you have ever pushed a stroller or walked a dog out toward the Eldamain Road bridge at Hoover Forest Preserve, you know the moment. The trail runs smooth and shaded right up to the guardrail, then stops. Eldamain Road cuts through, cars moving at a clip that makes crossing on foot feel like a decision rather than a stroll, and Fox River Bluffs sits visible on the other side, close enough to see and just far enough that most people turned around instead.
That gap is gone now. Kendall County's Forest Preserve District has finished a trail connection that runs underneath the Eldamain Road bridge rather than across it, and for anyone in Fields of Farm Colony who treats these preserves as a regular part of the week, that change is worth more than a new mile of gravel. It's the difference between three separate outings and one.
The Bridge That Used to Stop You
The project itself is modest on paper: a three-quarter-mile trail extension with a three-tenths-mile loop tying into Fox River Bluffs, built with a $200,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources' Regional Trails Program and a $272,000 commitment from Kendall County's Transportation Alternatives Program. The district set an early 2026 completion target, and this past spring, Shaw Local reported the work was in its final stretch.
What makes it more than a bike-path footnote is the underpass itself. District President Brian DeBolt has pointed out that a pair of bald eagles has nested near the bridge for years, visible to anyone who paused there before the connection existed. Local equestrians pushed for the project once they learned the bridge was coming, asking the district to design something that horses, cyclists, and walkers could all use without anyone stepping into traffic. That is exactly what got built. You no longer cross Eldamain Road to keep moving between preserves. You go under it.
Three Preserves, One Parking Lot
Before this connection, Hoover, Fox River Bluffs, and Subat functioned as three separate destinations that happened to share a river. Each had its own trailhead, its own short loop, its own reason to drive out on a Saturday. Now a single outing can move through all three without a car in between.
Here is what that actually strings together:
- Hoover Forest Preserve, at just under 400 acres along nearly a mile of the Fox River, holds the district's Rookery education center, a recreated Pottawatomi village called Neshnabe'k, and trail-side landmarks like Rob Roy Creek, Fox Bluff, Beaver Lake, Catfish Pond, and the Tall Oaks and Fox View picnic areas.
- Fox River Bluffs, a 168-acre preserve opened earlier this decade, is still mid-restoration: more than 31,000 trees and shrubs planted, 60 acres reseeded to prairie, and a documented population of the federally endangered rusty patched bumble bee living in that restored ground.
- Subat Forest Preserve, 71 acres on the Plano side of Eldamain Road, combines oak-hickory forest, restored prairie, and a rare fen habitat across Rob Roy Creek, connected by a new ADA-accessible trail and wetland boardwalk.
For someone in Fields of Farm Colony, that's a meaningfully different trip than it was a year ago. You can park once at Hoover, most commonly at the Meadowhawk Lodge lot, and walk or ride into terrain that used to require three separate drives and three separate trailheads.
What's Finishing Now
The trail connection wasn't the only project on the district's list. The Mary M. Subat Nature Center, a three-season, open-air pavilion funded largely through a bequest from the Subat family alongside an Illinois Department of Natural Resources grant, sits at the Plano end of the new connection. Kendall County Forest Preserve District Executive Director Antoinette White told Shaw Local this past spring that the building itself was already open to walk through, even though the interpretive exhibits inside hadn't gone up yet.
"The preserve is still open right now and you can even check out the building, it just does not have the educational exhibits up yet. We're going to be putting those up very shortly."
That was White's assessment as of March. If you're planning a first visit this fall, it's worth a quick check of the district's own site before you go, since exhibit installations tend to move on their own schedule and a nature center without its nature displayed is a different stop than the one being built toward.
White has also talked about what the center is meant to do once it's finished: use the roof itself as a kind of map paying tribute to the history of the Subat land, and give younger visitors a reason to care about the wetland, prairie, and woodland habitats sitting right behind their own subdivisions. It's a small building with a specific job, teaching the kind of local ecology that most people drive past without naming.
What It Means From the East Side of Route 71
Fields of Farm Colony sits east of Route 71, on acreage lots where a well and a septic system are part of daily life rather than an inspection line item. Hoover, by contrast, sits west of town along West Fox Road, on the far side of that same highway. The two places have always been close enough to feel like they belonged to the same county without being close enough to walk between on a whim.
That's exactly why the underpass matters more here than it might in a neighborhood already backed up against the preserve. The drive out Route 71 and across to West Fox Road hasn't changed. What's changed is what waits at the other end of that drive. A Saturday that used to mean picking one preserve now means picking a starting point, because the trail itself will carry you into the next one without a second parking lot or a second decision about where to go.
If you're the kind of household that already lists hiking and trails among your regular weekend habits, and plenty of Fields of Farm Colony neighbors do, this is the update worth knowing before you plan the next outing. Bring the mountain bike or the trail runners, not just the stroller, since a portion of the Hoover network is shared multi-use terrain built with mountain bikes and equestrians in mind alongside walkers.
One More Thing to Put on the Calendar
Kendall County has run an annual New Year's Hike at Hoover for years, led by naturalist Mark Harrington, who walks the group through the preserve's winter ecology while everyone works off holiday food. It's a small, recurring tradition rather than a headline event, but it's the kind of detail that tells you these preserves function as a community fixture, not just acreage the county happens to own. With three preserves now connected by a single walkable route, that hike, and every other outing that starts at Hoover, has more ground to cover than it did last January.
None of this changes what Fields of Farm Colony is on paper: a settled subdivision of acreage lots east of Route 71, built out over two decades, still on well and septic service. What it changes is the answer to a question longtime residents ask without thinking about it much: where do you go on a Saturday morning when the weather's good and you don't feel like getting in the car twice. For the first time, the honest answer might be that you only need to park once.
If you're weighing a move into Fields of Farm Colony, or thinking about what your own acreage lot is worth now that a piece of county infrastructure like this has landed nearby, The Bakka Team knows this stretch of Kendall County the way only someone who's lived here for decades can. Let's Connect when you're ready to talk through what's next.
