Hanover to West Whitton Road:
A supremely pleasant trip that comes with some caveats, this lower slice of the Apple River is not nearly as scenic or swift as its upper “core,” but it’s more reliable and less illegal. An imperceptible current allows casual paddlers to take their time through ragged sandy cliffs and oaky bluffs while encountering outstanding wildlife. Accesses are poor and dodgy but worth the difficulty.
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆
Trip Report Date: February 5, 2024 + November 14, 2025
Skill Level: Beginner-Intermediate
Class Difficulty: Class I rapids (depending on water level) in the first 100 yards, then quietwater for the rest of the trip.
Gradient:
≈ 1′ per mile
Gauge Recorded on this Trip:
Hanover: ht/ft: 4.4 | cfs: 360 (2.5.24)
Hanover: ht/ft: 4 | cfs: 100 (11.14.25)
Recommended Levels:
Water levels are reliable for this segment of the Apple River. That said, the hundred-yard dash below the Hanover dam will be either a splashy run of Class I standing waves (4.4′) or a humbling crawl through Scrape City (4′).
Put-In:
Below the dam and behind “the Factory” in Hanover, Illinois
GPS: 42.25727, -90.28662
Take-Out:
West Whitton Road
GPS: 42.20942, -90.25042
Time: Put in at 1:00p. Out at 4:00p.
Total Time: 3h
Miles Paddled: 9.5
Wildlife:
Bald eagles, great blue herons, a skinny snake, several deer, many raccoons, a bevy of beavers, veritably belting kingfishers, and a coyote.
Shuttle Information:
4.25 miles along Highway 84 – a busy road with a lot of heavy vehicles and no shoulder. 7 miles along Whitton Road and Hanover Hill Road – unpaved, very steep, but quiet and scenic.
Background:
The Apple might be the “eye” of savvy river-paddlers in northwestern Illinois since it is the (in)famous stream shrouded in secrecy, even controversy, thanks to its trespassing issues and fickle water levels but steep gradient and incredible aesthetics. Spoiler alert: this trip on the Apple River is 30 miles downstream from the glitzy segment. Two sections, one singular river, but entirely different vibes.
The Apple River is comparable to the Kickapoo River in southwestern Wisconsin in a few ways. Both streams can be summed up thusly: there’s the segment endowed with jaw-dropping geology, and then there’s the other 90% of the river. Interestingly, the grandeur that is exposed bedrock outcrops for mile after mile is displayed lavishly in both rivers’ upstream segments, in turn followed by enormous mid-sections that are dull, muddy, and surrounded by agriculture. Finally, both offer pleasant reprieves before reaching their confluences. But the two streams are opposite in this sense: whereas the Kickapoo’s prettiest section is also its most paddled, almost nobody paddles the Apple where it is gorgeous and swift.
The reason for this glaring discrepancy is simple: “boating” is verboten along the river’s prettiest and most fun stretch, even though it runs through a state park named after the river. Yes, you read that right: paddling is prohibited on the Apple River through the canyon of Apple River Canyon State Park. And this is in a state ignobly known for its lack of public land, a state where landowner rights sound like they’re from a gilded age of robber barons and capitalist magnates – not the mundane reality of 21st Century soybean row-crops and struggling farmers whose adult children vape and post to social media, let alone their grandkids. If you’re curious about the upper Apple (aka the sexy, illicit section), you can read about and see photos from our “Judas Priest paddle” back in 2014 here. And if you want to know more about paddling legalities in Illinois, see the bottom of this trip report.
Taking my cue per usual from the good book by Mike Svob, Paddling Illinois, in which he lays out two trips on the Apple River, I’d had my eye on his second trip, the lower segment, for many years. The drive is two hours and change from where I live and, frankly, if I’m going to self-sequester from behind a windshield for that amount of time – especially to go to Illinois – there are more compelling prospects in the neighborhood (like the Galena River or Carroll Creek). But the Apple River – even the bottom “pit” of it – peels through the unglaciated Driftless Area of northwestern Illinois, so I had to do my due diligence at some point.
That point announced itself in early February 2024, thanks to a freak uptick in the mercury that allowed for open water and mid-50s air temperature. Traditionally, winter is a spectacularly impractical time to explore new paddling prospects – especially involving long(ish) drives. But, to date, nobody has ever accused me of being practical, not even once. So, in the middle of winter I drove down to Hanover, Illinois, to paddle the Apple, and it ended up being a splendid trip. But a few days after I’d returned home I inadvertently deleted half of the trip’s photos. How that happened is kind of funny, especially to those who are aware of how many camera debacles I’ve endured over the 15 years of documenting paddle trips. My old handheld digital camera got wet and simply stopped functioning midway through the trip. Another one bites the dust, I thought with head-shaking chagrin…
But I had my phone and so used that to capture the second half of the trip. This should surprise no one, but to make a basic analogy, I am to technology what a square is to a round hole. Thus, while trying to transfer the photo files from the phone to my laptop I managed to delete everything in one slick click. It was the difference between wondering where something will be heading and wondering how it got beheaded.
Thus, I knew I had to return and redo this trip someday in order to include it eventually on the website; posting this trip with only 50% of the photos simply would not do – let’s call it a rotten apple. And while there are many trips I’ve paddled throughout the years that are not documented on the site for a number of reasons, I wanted this one to make the grade. And so thanks to another freakish warm weather event in the middle of November nearly two years later, I headed down to Hanover again – this time with Scotty. Not only was I able to capture the second half of the trip – I’m happy to say that my original handheld camera survived after all – but the late afternoon autumn light was spiritual and ethereal, a hundred times more vivid than my mid-winter trip.
Plus a redux experience offers additional water-level data to help baseline what’s low, middle, and high – valuable intel otherwise unobtainable for this river. To be sure, two trips still aren’t sufficient to convey the Big Picture, but a second trip adds so much more perspective than a first (and sometimes only) impression.
Overview:
The venerable Svob recommends putting in along Fulton Street in Hanover “several hundred yards downstream-right from the dam,” where “opposite the cemetery there’s a grassy area you can unload boats and carry them down a gentle slope to the bank.” Maybe that was the case in 2000, when Paddling Illinois was first published, but I found nothing matching this nondescript spot in 2024 or 2025. Moreover, the banks on both sides of the river are prohibitively steep and festooned with what looks like Japanese Hops invading like a riotous mob. Besides, unloading boats and gear is one thing, but then where does one leave the vehicle?
Alternatively, Svob mentions that “the river can also be accessed from the Siebe Corporation property, downstream-left from the dam” and to ask permission to do so. Again, maybe the big factory beside the dam was called “Siebe” 25 years ago, but today it’s an abandoned building literally called “The Factory.” There’s no one around to seek permission about anything. Neither is there signage stating No Trespassing. But it’s an easy launch along the low, even banks, plus the opportunity to ride the standing waves below the dam. This is where I began in 2024, which Scotty and I recapped in 2025. At the time of this writing, there were no access issues in doing so. Besides, feint footpaths indicate that fishing below the dam is a popular pastime.
Incidentally, that big old building called “The Factory” closed only ten years ago, in 2015. For half a century before then, the workers inside it (mostly local women) made the solenoids for washing machines and dishwashers, drinking fountains and coffee makers. But it was acquired by a private equity firm that eventually moved operations to Mexico. Cue the song “Mighty Trucks of Midnight.”
Long before there was a factory making widget-like gadgets, there was a woolen dam for textiles. Before the woolen dam there was a gristmill for flour – and before the gristmill there was a sawmill to build a town. And before Hanover was named after the New Hampshire town along the Connecticut River and home to Ivy Leagued Dartmouth, it was called “Apple River Falls,” thanks to the 11’ drop located where the dam is situated today. And still even before “Apple River Falls,” the future town of Hanover was called “Wapello,” after a Meskwaki (Fox) Chief during the era of the so-called Black Hawk War (by which this part of Illinois was directly impacted). For more on the interesting history of “The Factory,” see here.
Svob goes on to say “when the water level is neither too high nor too low, a series of standing waves develops for about a hundred yards below the dam.” Here he is spot-on. In February 2024 the gauge read 330 cfs, which yielded a fun run of Class I rapids (which in turn got my camera wet enough to later dysfunction). However, with only 100 cfs in Nov. 2025, this was a sad plateau of “riffle-ettes” too shallow to float over. The underlying bedrock here is likely limestone, so when the river is low, you might need to walk through this. As I told Scotty, there’s good news and bad news: the good news is after the shallow shoals below the dam there will be plenty of water for the rest of the trip; the bad news is that was supposed to be the most fun section of moving water.
The issue of sufficient water volume on a river next to a factory that produced valves supplying water to domestic appliances is an irony not lost on me.
The river dips south for a mile, then shoots up a half-mile north, and eases southeast for the longest single straightaway on this trip. The banks are steep along both sides and beveled at impenetrable angles. Scattered gatherings of tree debris will need to be avoided in the river – here and throughout the trip. Evidence of high-water events is easily discernible where akimbo tree limbs don’t make a lick of sense, except during the tackled huddle of floodwater. The only visible rock outcrop along the lower Apple River here appears on the left – low, short, and skinny. Just past it on the right is a concrete obelisk that’s either a deer stand done in the style of brutalism or perhaps part of a much earlier dam. A small handful of houses appears and disappears in just a few paddle strokes – the only ones seen on this trip.
Hard to appreciate from the river’s vantage, but a long swath along the left bank is public land protected by Jo Daviess County Conservation called the Wapello Land and Water Reserve, an area arguably more interesting for its cultural than natural importance. Comprising some 170 acres, there are remnants of a very old village together with a ceremonial mound estimated to be from 700 to 1,000 years old. If you shuttle along Highway 84, you’ll pass the parking area for this; it’s worth pulling into and checking out before or after your trip.
The banks become steeper as you venture downstream. I’m not sure what the cutoff is for when “steep banks” become “cliffs” – can a cliff be only 25′ tall? You can decide for yourself based on the photos below. Point is, the landscape gets more dramatic. As you begin meandering westward you’ll come upon the steepest natural feature on this trip, where the river briefly traces its fingertip along the shoulder of the Hanover Bluff Nature Preserve. And it was here, in February 2024, that I spooked a sleeping coyote who then sprung into alert and high-tailed it out of there. Sorry, buddy! At first I swore it was a wolf, but had to talk myself down from that highfalutin ledge; there are no known wolf packs in Illinois. A loner like me who wandered down from Wisconsin? Maybe, but probably not. Still, it was exciting to see a coyote – my first time while paddling!
And then about five minutes later I heard a thunderous sound from behind me. I turned around just in time to see a trailer-sized chunk of the left bank just calve off and fall into the river – natural erosion in real time. It was probably about 100 yards behind me, but the plunk was enough to send considerable waves my way. It was one of those oh-so random moments like seeing a shooting star or lightning strike, but together with the coyote and the near-60 degree day in February, I kept thinking “All right, Apple…”
Evidence of erosion lies all around you. The banks here are as rugged as they are ragged. Too soft to be called sandstone, but too solid to be just sand, there’s a terrifically weathered sense to the landscape for miles on end. Combined with the practically ubiquitous Japanese Hops that look ghoulish and cartoonish – downright Seussian – there’s a surreal feeling to the environs I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else. Certainly not as dramatic as the upper Apple River, nor comparable to the nearby Carroll Creek, where limestone outcrops teem and seem to trip over themselves, the lower Apple slowly flows through an almost otherworldly area distinctly itself.
A couple buildings atop a steep bank on the right precede the bridge at strangely named “Crazy Hollow Road” – where there’s no viable access or parking – which more or less marks the halfway point of the trip. One mile later the river runs parallel to Highway 84 for a short spell; you’ll hear vehicles, but there’s no visual nuisance since the road is well above and set back from the water. Where the river makes an abrupt right-hand bend to the west you’re only 0.75-mile away from the takeout at Whitton Road bridge – that is, as the heron flies; river-wise, there’s still 3.5 miles. That’s how kinky the river gets here! Indeed, it doubles back on itself where a thin but steep ridge/hill not quite 90’ wide and less than that high prevents the river from cutting a new channel and sloughing an oxbow. And so it is that for the next mile you will face every cardinal direction at least once. It’s cool to see this on the map.
The final mile and change is much less dramatic. Here, the river will eventually bend left and flutter eastward around some deadfall. There’s a pretty bluff in the backdrop on the other side of Highway 84 that looms before you to the east. On our mid-November trip, approaching the end around 4pm, the sunset from the west on the russet-colored oak leaves was dazzling and mesmerizing. Admittedly, this was another happy accident that just happened on a random day, not something to be expected. But oh my lord, it was like liquid ambrosia! It was warm and enveloping. It was as much a thing as a tone of sound. It was like a molten, golden filter over the lens of our eyes. It was a presence, it was ethereal, it was autumnal fire.
Alas, nothing further from that can be said about the takeout at Whitton Road. Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous, the sacred to the profane (at least profanity)!
Svob states to exit “upstream-left.” What he omits is how steep and stupid the bank is here. Sometimes I seriously wonder what Meister Svob was thinking – the landscape couldn’t have changed this much, could it have? The only good thing that can be said about the so-called “access” at Whitton Road is there’s good parking by the bridge (a novelty not to be taken for granted in Illinois). But the river-left bank here is like an earthen wall at a 120-degree angle composed of a rough composite of unstable sand, mud, and scratchy brush. When I did this alone in February 2024 I had to push my canoe up the banks with one hand while grabbing onto roots and branches with my other to keep from sliding down – talk about tough sledding! Remembering that dodgy dance, with Scotty in November 2025 I had the presence of mind to have had rope at the ready and fastened down two sets ahead of time. This way, I could pull myself up the banks and then belay the bow of the boats with the other rope. Asinine? Yes. Better than no ropes? You bet.
Or do as Scotty smartly suggested and take out on river-right – where it’s less steep and there’s even a stable periphery of rocks to land/lodge on at the water’s edge – and then schlep your boat and gear over the bridge to the parking area on the other side.
What we liked:
When the river is high enough, the standing waves below the Hanover dam are good, clean fun! And the remote scenery along and near the Hanover Bluff Preserve is very pretty. Indeed, the seemingly endless array of undulating hills/steep banks in all their tortured, eroded appearances is likely the highlight of this trip. And the wildlife – it’s a special river indeed that is home to bald eagles, beaver, and even coyote!
Since there’s virtually no current and the banks are steep, the surface of the river is often glass-flat. So, on a sunny day the river casts magnificent reflections of the trees and hills – see photos below. By and by, there’s a primitive sense with very little development throughout this trip. To be sure, half of the time you’ll be surrounded by agriculture, but since the banks are so steep, you won’t ever see fields.
Speaking of things unseen, if you only drive up and down Highway 84 for the shuttle, you’d never know that just to the west is yet another otherworldly sight (site?). Called the Savanna Army Depot, a huge swath of not-entirely-abandoned land sprawling for miles, this used to be an ammunition depot/ ordnance factory/ bomb-testing area. It’s over 13,000 acres large! Most of it is a veritable no-man’s-land closed off to the public, but some areas are open – just watch where you step! Also of note, the largest sand dune in all of Illinois is located here, punctuated with cacti. Again, watch your step. For more visuals and drone footage of the area today, see here. Do yourself a favor and shuttle at least once using Whitton and Hanover Hill roads (on the west side of the river). It’s none too out of the way and totally worth the scenery.
What we didn’t like:
Let me not bury the lead here, even though it’s at the very end of the trip: the take-out sucks. It just does, full stop .
On the flipside, there’s the ambiguous access below the Hanover dam. Even though I’m more of an ask-for-forgiveness than permission kind of guy, I do generally respect private property. There’s zero signage behind the abandoned building called “The Factory” – none in Feb ’24, none in November of 25. So, I took that as a good “sign” that it was OK to launch just below the dam and leave my car in an abandoned lot nearby. But still, it feels…uncomfortable. Honestly, so much of paddling in Illinois feels that way. Just leery, self-conscious. For crying out loud, we’re talking about paddling kayaks and canoes on a damn river for like 2-4 hours here! Nobody’s land is being trespassed on or taken advantage of. No one’s stealing corn stalks or soy sprouts; no one’s lighting campfires or littering on a 5’x10′ patch of gravel in the middle of a 50’ wide river. We’re a quarter-century into the 21st Century, when almost nothing is tangible anymore since damn near everything’s digital, cars drive themselves, AI thinks for all of us, and public wealth is pilfered hourly by private corporations playing footsy and taking selfies with corrupt politicians. We count time in nanoseconds, trade in fractions of pennies, and send rockets to Mars in hopes of swapping Earthling status to become Martians. Yet I still feel weird for paddling in Illinois. I mean, come on.
My last complaint is after the hundred yards or so of Class I standing waves below the dam, there’s virtually no perceptible current for the rest of this trip. That gets old. While it’s pretty, it sometimes feels like you’re paddling through a canal.
If we did this trip again:
Thanks to two weather flukes, I have already paddled this trip again (and am so glad I did). Even though the water level was notably shallower the second time around – and woefully shallow below the dam at that – I actually enjoyed the latter trip more than the first foray. But if I were to come back a third time, I’d do so only when the gauge read between 4.3 to 4.7; too low, the standing waves will barely be ripples, but too high means they’ll be washed out entirely. Since I’ve paddled this trip now only in February and November, I don’t know what the landscape looks like in summer, but I’m ill-inclined to find out. The Whitton Road bridge is difficult and overgrown already, without adding the worry of full vegetative god-knows-what to the mix (poisonous plants, sneaky snakes, bee nests, etc.?). And if I had to end at Whitton Road, I’d take out on river-right.
Unfortunately, the lack of accesses makes tailoring the lower Apple River difficult. There’s no viable access/parking at the only bridge in between Hanover and Whitton Road (so-called “Crazy Hollow Road”), and between Whitton Road and the Mississippi River there’s only one bridge (Army Depot Road), where access appears crappy and may be not be permissible. (While the river here is technically “public,” being so close to the munitions depot (federal land) might put the kibosh on using the bridge or leaving a vehicle here.) Finally, once on the Big River, there’s no access until the boat ramp at Mississippi Palisades State Park, anywhere from 5 to 7.5 miles from the confluence – and that’s following the 5 miles from Whitton Road to the confluence. In other words, to paddle below Whitton Road is an entirely separate trip. But if there is legit access at Army Depot Road, I’d consider ending there next time. Doing so would add nearly 3 miles to this trip – or 13 miles total of virtually no-current water – and make for a long slog of a day indeed. But I think it would be worth seeing the landscape transition from bluffs to bottomlands.
Regardless, if I did this trip again I’d like to make time to hike the Hanover bluff and/or check out whatever I was allowed to at the Savanna Army Depot. Sunset in early February is only marginally later than sunset in mid-November, and on both of these occasions I faced a 2-hour drive on the flipside. Thus, there was no time for après-paddle activities. Also, I’d definitely arrange the day to allow for a stop-over at the Highway 20 Brewing Company, in Elizabeth, on my way back to Madison. A former church converted into a brewery/bar? That’s my kind of house of worship.
Lawyer Up! Paddling Legalities in the Land of Lincoln:
You might rightfully wonder “so, it’s OK to paddle the lower Apple River, but not the upper?” And the answer is…not necessarily-maybe-probably not. Here is the official list of so-called “public waters” in Illinois. While the Apple River is included on the list, only a section of it is blessed with the legal thumbs-up – and that segment begins arbitrarily just upstream of this trip’s takeout and ends at the Mississippi River (which, to add to the comic absurdity, is the segment that nobody paddles). Thus, from Hanover down to 100’ upstream of the Whitton Road bridge, the Apple River is not recognized as “public” and therefore a paddler is technically trespassing. But there’s hardly a body of water in all of Illinois where you aren’t trespassing while paddling – that’s how draconian and ass-backwards the situation is.
The neighboring Galena River is similarly situated. From the Wisconsin state line to a totally indiscriminate point about a mile north of Stagecoach Road outside of the City of Galena, the river is not public, despite its popularity and even paddling promotion. In other words, even though it is not public and thus technically trips the trigger of trespassing, it seems that nobody really cares (and thank heavens!). Again, people are just spending an afternoon paddling; I really don’t think a middle-aged couple coming in not-hot in a Toyota Prius with a couple kayaks warrants a threat to the sovereignty of private landowners.
So what’s the deal with the upper Apple River and worries about trespassing? I genuinely do not know. I can speculate about fly-fishing and flash-flooding, but there’s no value in speculating. But to be clear, there are two separate realities here: the designated segment through the state park that for inscrutable reasons prohibits “boating” and then all the miles downriver along private land where a paddler is supposed to first ask permission from house after house, farm after farm, before floating on its waters (since the river along the banks of one’s dry land is considered part of the landowner’s property). The most bewitching stretch of the Apple cannot even be viably paddled for like 90% of the time due to the steep gradient, lack of tributaries, and inconsistent rain, that the whole thing seems so blown out of proportion and is a matter of symbolism, not substance. As for this trip on the Apple, I just don’t see anyone caring about folks paddling it. I mean, why would they?
Want to do something about that? Me too! Alas, I don’t live in Illinois. But if you do, you might want to contact your state legislators and urge them to pass House Bill 1568 and bring the state in line with the 21st Century. Not sure how to do that? We got you; click here to find your peeps.
This is an awfully meandering way to say that it will be up to you whether you wish to paddle the Apple. I think you should! But I also think you should know what the deal is beforehand.
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Related Information:
Apple River I: East Canyon Road to South Apple River Road
Wikipedia: Apple River (Illinois)
Photo Gallery:
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