Mount Trashmore in Robert E. James Park. Photo: Nick Number / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
Evanston is mostly flat, so a 65-foot hill gets attention, especially when everyone knows what is under it. Mount Trashmore, in Robert E. James Park, is a former solid waste landfill that was closed and turned into a park in 1965.
The hill is an example of landfill restoration, in which a closed dump is reshaped into public open space. It is one of three places called Mount Trashmore; the others are in Florida and Virginia. A Chicago-area sledding guide places the Evanston hill at Dodge Avenue and Mulford Street.
Skiing on a former dump
In 1973, the city allowed skiing on the hill and installed a tow rope and snowmaking machines. The experiment did not last. Skiing was later prohibited, in the 1980s, but the slope stayed popular for sledding and tobogganing in winter and for runners and hikers in summer.
Sledding rules
Winter use on the hill has centered on sledding and tobogganing ever since skiing was dropped.
The sledding guide says the largest mound, the one people call Mount Trashmore, is off-limits, while sledding is allowed on four adjacent slopes. Rules like that can change, so anyone planning a winter outing should check the City of Evanston’s parks information first. This article could not confirm the currently posted rules.
A Rose Bowl training hill
The hill also has a place in Northwestern football lore. In the summer of 1995, Larry Lilja, then the team’s strength and conditioning director, planted a small Rose Bowl flag at the summit and had the Wildcats run up the hill repeatedly. The team went on to play in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 1996.
It is a modest piece of history, but it fits the hill’s character: an unplanned landmark that the community turned into something useful. WTTW, the Chicago public television station, also shot a video at the hill in 1983.
What the hill offers the neighborhood
The park around it carries the name of Robert E. James, and the hill is its signature feature. Its slopes are artificial, as with any landfill hill. The 1973 skiing experiment, with its tow rope and snowmaking machines, shows how seriously the city once took the idea of turning a former dump into a winter attraction.
For nearby residents, the hill offers something the surrounding blocks do not: a climb and a vantage point. In winter it fills with sleds. In warmer months people use it for training, much as the Wildcats did in 1995.
It is easy to assume a landfill hill belongs to the city’s recycling story. This article found no source tying this particular hill to Evanston’s recycling programs, so that link is left out. What the record does support is the hill’s use: a landfill closed in 1965 that was hosting tow-rope skiing within a decade, and that has served as a neighborhood hill since.
Margaret Whitfield is the editor of The Evanston Edge and covers local government, development and neighborhoods.
