In 2023, artist Lindsay Olson became TWI’s first artist-in-residence, using a 3,000-year-old floral collar as inspiration. A year later, 2 rare marsh birds returned to Calumet

What if a landscape destroyed by decades of industry could be rebuilt—not simply by planting trees, but by bringing back the water, wildlife and natural cycles that once defined it?

That is the challenge unfolding across the Calumet region, a sprawling wetland landscape at the southern end of Lake Michigan, stretching across Chicago’s Southeast Side and Northwest Indiana.