The Kaskaskia Alliance Trail, named in honor of local Illini tribes, extends the Grand Illinois Trail from Lock 14 in La Salle to Lock 3 in Bureau, Illinois. It courses a route through Peru, Spring Valley and DePue, where it closely follows the Great Bend of the Illinois River.
The local trail user preference for the trail has consistently been a rail-trail routing along the existing Rock Island railroad right of way. Support for a full rail-trail routing has come from the Illinois Association of Snowmobile Clubs, the Bureau County Board, Starved Rock Cycle Club, Bicycle Illinois, the Illinois Valley Bicycle Club and others. The rail-trail routing allows for far greater trail use, and would accommodate the full range of potential trail users, at approximately the same cost as the herky-jerky street plan presented by the IDNR. However, despite trail user appeals, IDNR trail planner Dick Westfall refuses to change his plan.
Developed chiefly through local effort, the trail project was initiated in 1992 due to the efforts of Bill Brown of Utica, Illinois, M. Blouke Carus of Peru, Illinois and Todd Volker of Ottawa, Illinois.