The 15.5-acre York/High Ridge Forest Preserve in Villa Park is a haven for local wildlife.
This forest preserve is primarily woodland and shrub meadow. Sugar Creek runs through it. Several types of wildlife live here, including bullfrogs, coyotes, eastern towhees, great horned owls and rare red-headed woodpeckers. Plants such as wild gooseberry, buttercups, milkweeds and the regionally rare bracken fern grow here as well.
Driving Directions
York/High Ridge is on High Ridge Road, just north of Roosevelt Road (Route 38) between Myers Road and Ardmore Avenue. It does not have a parking lot.
History
The preserve was a prairie adjacent to Sugar Creek that European settlers converted to farmland.
The Forest Preserve District purchased the bulk of the preserve in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
