The North Shore Channel Trail beside McCormick Boulevard, just over the Skokie line from Evanston. Photo: AlphaBeta135 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
West Evanston has no lakefront, but it has a long, narrow strip of green that runs beside the North Shore Channel. Ladd Arboretum fills about three-quarters of a mile of it, and the paved trail along the channel carries walkers and cyclists through the park and beyond.
How the arboretum began
The arboretum traces to a single tree. The Evanston Review planted a ginkgo to honor Edward Rixon Ladd (1883 to 1956), the newspaper’s founder, publisher and editor. More trees followed, and the arboretum was formally dedicated on June 10, 1960.
It covers 23 acres in a strip roughly 0.75 miles long, between McCormick Boulevard and the North Shore Channel. The land is not city-owned. It is leased from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, which manages the channel. The address is 2024 McCormick Blvd.
What is planted there
The trees are grouped by plant family, with sections for birch, legume, maple, oak and pine. Around them are smaller gardens and features: a Meadow Garden, a Prairie Restoration Area, a Cherry Tree Walk and a nut tree area. The Rotary Club of Evanston’s International Friendship Garden includes All-America Rose Selections. There is also a Women’s Terrace, a gazebo and a bird sanctuary.
The Evanston Ecology Center, the arboretum’s nature education facility, is on the grounds. Its exhibits include fossils, seeds and mounted animal specimens, and it runs weekend, after-school, summer camp, school and adult programs.
The trail that runs through it
The North Shore Channel Trail is what turns the arboretum from a destination into a corridor. According to the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s TrailLink guide, it runs from Green Bay Road and McCormick Boulevard in northern Evanston to Lawrence and Francisco avenues in Chicago. On the west side of the channel, the paved path heads south from Green Bay Road past a series of parks, including Ladd Arboretum, and the path through the arboretum connects to the Ecology Center.
Published trail lengths vary. A 2024 TrailLink guide lists 6.7 miles, while TrailLink’s web listing gives 8.3 miles, so the figure depends on where a given source starts and stops counting. Sources also differ on whether the route is continuous. A 2026 TrailLink document describes a pedestrian bridge near Lincoln Avenue linking the two main sections, and an earlier note mentions segments under construction with detours, so it is worth checking conditions before planning a long ride.
For a shorter outing, TrailLink lists the International Friendship Garden lot at 2020 N. McCormick Blvd. as a parking option.
A park defined by its edges
Visitors who want the full effect can start at the Ecology Center, walk the groves family by family, and then follow the channel path north or south. The maple and oak groves and the Cherry Tree Walk are natural stops.
The arboretum’s shape comes from the infrastructure beside it. Because it sits on district-leased land between a channel and a boulevard, it is a long ribbon rather than a block-shaped park, and it works best as a place to walk end to end. The trail extends that walk past the park’s boundaries and ties it to the neighborhoods on either side.
Margaret Whitfield is the editor of The Evanston Edge and covers local government, development and neighborhoods.
