In her photographs of the Midewin Prairie, Terry Evans captures this moment of transformation, contrasting the decayed monuments of twentieth-century warfare with the pastoral beauty and historic structures preserved within the boundaries of the former installation. Through her evocative images of the arsenal (abandoned bunkers, disused railway tracks, crumbling factory buildings and offices) and the countryside around the base (tallgrass prairie, a blackbird's nest, grazing cattle, a meandering creek, as well as a prehistoric burial mound and a Civil War-era fieldstone fence), Evans explores one of this country's most troubling and least understood legacies -- the militarization of the American landscape. In his informative introduction, Tony Hiss notes that installations similar to the Joliet Arsenal were built across the United States during the Second World War and at the height of the Cold War, eventually occupying 30 million acres of land. Approximately 20 million acres (an area the size of Austria) remain under military control today, and the debate over what to do with the sprawling munitions factories for which the post-Cold War military has no further use has begun in earnest. Joliet's transformation to Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie will serve as a model for future conversion of military lands into civilian use, and Terry Evans's photographic record of this change provides hope that renewal is possible.

In her photographs of the Midewin Prairie, Terry Evans captures this moment of transformation, contrasting the decayed monuments of twentieth-century warfare with the pastoral beauty and historic structures preserved within the boundaries of the former installation. Through her evocative images of the arsenal (abandoned bunkers, disused railway tracks, crumbling factory buildings and offices) and the countryside around the base (tallgrass prairie, a blackbird's nest, grazing cattle, a meandering creek, as well as a prehistoric burial mound and a Civil War-era fieldstone fence), Evans explores one of this country's most troubling and least understood legacies -- the militarization of the American landscape. In his informative introduction, Tony Hiss notes that installations similar to the Joliet Arsenal were built across the United States during the Second World War and at the height of the Cold War, eventually occupying 30 million acres of land. Approximately 20 million acres (an area the size of Austria) remain under military control today, and the debate over what to do with the sprawling munitions factories for which the post-Cold War military has no further use has begun in earnest. Joliet's transformation to Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie will serve as a model for future conversion of military lands into civilian use, and Terry Evans's photographic record of this change provides hope that renewal is possible.