By Janelle Walker   

It was nearly 175 years ago that Gen. Winfield Scott stood on the east bank of the Fox River and wished he had a bridge near the path that later became Army Trail Road.

Now, that bridge the Blackhawk War general would have appreciated is actually coming to Kane County, officials joked Thursday.

Dignitaries, including Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, arrived en masse at a former landscaping nursery to commemorate the groundbreaking for the Stearns Road Bridge corridor - an east-west thoroughfare between St. Charles and South Elgin that has been in the works for the past 20 years.

"It feels like it was 175 years ago that we started the process," to get the bridge sited and funded, said Karen McConnaughay, Kane County Board chairman.

The $145 million, six-stage project is set to begin in November with wetland mitigation, detention basins, bridge construction and earthwork. The entire 4.6-mile corridor is expected to open for traffic in the fall of 2010 and will connect Randall Road on the west to Route 59 on the east.

When completed, the corridor and new Fox River bridge will bring modern and efficient accessibility to the Fox Valley region, said County Board member Jan Carlson of Elburn, chairman of the county Transportation Committee. He was also the first official to evoke the name of General Scott and the Blackhawk War as the first time a European settler saw the need for a bridge in the region.

When Scott and his troops left Chicago to battle Blackhawk and reached "a spot south of here that is now known as Army Trail Road, he thought 'Gee, this would be a great place for a bridge,'" Carlson joked.

For years, St. Charles Mayor Don DeWitt said, transportation in Kane County has focused on north-south connections. Having another Fox River bridge between Route 64 in downtown St. Charles and Route 20 on Elgin's south side is expected to alleviate traffic in downtown St. Charles by 10 percent, DeWitt said. South Elgin officials, who noted the new corridor will include McDonald Road on the village's west side, are also looking forward to the benefits of the new route.

"It will alleviate the traffic in our downtown," said South Elgin board member Bill DiFulvio. "It will make our downtown more desirable. Not all the people who come to our downtown want to stop and shop or live there. Some are just in the way."

Five or six different corridors were discussed over the years, said Kane County Forest Preserve President John Hoscheit.

In the end, he said, St. Charles, Wayne and South Elgin had a part in finding the right route.

"It is a win-win for all three communities," Hoscheit said.

The project also will restore two fens and a wetland, and bring an additional 200 acres of open space into the forest preserve district and an additional seven miles of bike trails.

It took more than a few people to bring the new corridor to fruition, Hastert said. But, he said, in the 175 years that "people have been civilized here, have settled here, 10 percent of that time, I've had to build a bridge here, too."

Kane County is the fifth-fastest-growing county in the country, Hastert said, and, "We haven't kept up with the growth."