Pere Marquette State Park and Mississippi River SFWA

Our second day visiting Alton, IL was one of our most exciting hiking days yet. We were visiting our 60th park, and for that milestone we visited Pere Marquette State Park. This park has been one of our most anticipated, and was the reason we decided to come to this region for our big trip of 2024. In addition, we also visited Mississippi River State Fish and Wildlife Area. These parks are about 4 and a half hours southwest of Chicago, an hour north of St. Louis, or 30 minutes west of Alton. They are only a few minutes away from each other.

Of the parks we have visited so far, Pere Marquette is the most similar to Mississippi Palisades SP, with its pretty steep trails going up to overlook a river, in this case the Illinois River. The park is named after a French Jesuit missionary (Pere Jacques Marquette) who, along with a cartographer Louis Joliet and French voyageurs were in search of a water passage to the Pacific Ocean. They had travelled down the Mississippi, found that it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, and on their way back up took the Illinois River and stopped near what is now the State Park.

When civic groups sought to preserve the area, they raised money and the state matched their funds to purchase the land in 1931. The plan had originally been to call the park Piasa Buffs, after a local legend about Marquette and his group. Supposedly they came across two monsters that were part bird, part fish, part deer, and part man. The creature was called Piasa, and there is a representation painted on the bluffs about 20 miles away from the park. However, “Pere Marquette” ultimately became the name due to popular demand.

When asking “what is your favorite state park in Illinois?” The most common answer will be “Starved Rock”, but a significant faction will say Pere Marquette. This is for good reason. Not only is this park large and beautiful and well maintained, but it is also unique enough to stand out. The stony bluffs can be seen all around the park, on and off the trails. The visitor center is interesting, with stuff to see and do without leaving the parking lot.. This is also one of the few parks that has a lodge, doubling as a conference center. The lodge was built in the 1930s, and is a popular vacation destination, especially for people who live in the St. Louis area.

We got to this park bright and early on an overcast Saturday morning. We stopped into the visitor’s center and looked around briefly before heading out to start our hike. There are several trail options all over the park, and they are some of the most well marked trails we have come across in all of the parks we have visited so far. Regardless of which trail (or combination of trails) you choose to hike, something you will notice very quickly are the color-coded symbols spray painted on some of the trees. The trails we hiked were the Goat Cliff trail up to McAdams Peak, and then the Ridge Trail and the Dogwood Trail back down. Goat Cliff had yellow squares, Ridge had light blue arrows, and Dogwood had dark blue triangles. These symbols are also notated on the paper trail maps, making it even easier to find your way (the printed map may not show the symbols in color, but the color is still listed.) These painted marks on the trees can be seen in the pictures we took, and the sheer quantity of them made us feel very confident in where we were going.

Because this park features bluffs and rock formations, the trails do have a pretty intense incline in some places. The Goat Cliff Trail is basically all uphill until you reach McAdams peak. There were also a couple moments of needing to follow the trail through a narrow opening between the rocks. After McAdams peak and you start going back down, there are points where the trail gets very narrow, so much so that your group may opt to go single file. At the point where Goat Cliff met Ridge, there was such an intense incline that both of us had to grab the conveniently placed metal post in order to make it up (one of the very few trail markers that was not painted on a tree). This is to say, this particular park may pose a challenge to hikers just starting out. However, we feel that the experience of hiking here and especially the views of the river are absolutely worth the trip. Getting to the overlook made us feel very accomplished, and we were having an exceptionally good time hiking the entire time.

For those less experienced, there is also a scenic drive with overlooks that are easier to access, very similar to what Mississippi Palisades had. The sights at these are generally pretty good, but we did feel that they would be better in the winter time when all the leaves have fallen off the trees. These may be somewhat accessible to people with mobility issues, but we did not see any designated accessible trails like we have at other parks. We may have just missed them though.

One other thing that is very unique about this park is that you can actually rock climb here. It is only in designated areas, and it is only for very experienced climbers, but if that applies to you it is probably worth trying out.

After our very exciting morning at Pere Marquette SP, we visited the Mississippi River State Fish and Wildlife Area. We knew going into this park that there would not be any hiking here, as it is basically dedicated to fishing and hunting, and is pretty similar to Rend Lake SFWA that we visited in 2023. Also similar to Rend Lake, it was impossible to figure out specifically where we should go. Mississippi River SFWA is one of the largest parks in the state, because it covers so much of the river. Functionally, this means that it is just a bunch of access points to the river with no hiking. We found the sign indicating that we were in the right area, and we found what we believe to be one of those access points, but this is for sure not the place to go if you are interested in hiking.

The wineries that we visited that day were Grafton Winery & Brewhaus, and Old Bakery Beer Company. Grafton Winery is right on the scenic river highway and has outdoor seating overlooking the river. It also has excellent food and wine and is mere minutes away from Pere Marquette SP. Coming here after a hike is very fun and definitely worth it. Old Bakery Beer Company is actually in Alton. The beer here is pretty good, and the food was especially good, but coming here we actually felt this would be a great spot to host an event. Both of these places are great options to visit if you are in the area.

As we finished up that day, we were struck by just how special Pere Marquette State Park is. This park caters most to more experienced hikers, but there is still something for those who may be less confident in their abilities. And to those who have been hiking a little longer but don’t consider themselves to be that great at it, the scenery and the pay off are worth the extra challenge. We did not find this hike to be easy, but it was still very enjoyable the entire time. Mississippi River SFWA is good for fishermen, but if you want hiking, just go to Pere Marquette. If you are staying in Grafton or Alton, the two parks are extremely close together and you’ll have a much better hiking experience at Pere Marquette.