Castle Rock State Park is a two thousand-acre Illinois state park in Ogle County centered on Castle Rock, a prominent bluff of Saint Peter Sandstone from the Middle Ordovician period. The bluff reveals the region’s deep geological history, with white newly exposed quartz-rich rock and older surfaces browned by limonite, and it lies along the axis of the Sandwich Fault Zone, where Ordovician and Cambrian exposures are divided. Part of the future park was preserved through land acquired in 1921 by the Friends of Our Native Landscape. The park also figured in Illinois’s 2008 budget crisis, closing in November before reopening in February after Governor Rod Blagojevich’s impeachment and Governor Pat Quinn’s action.

Oregon, Illinois · USA