Further south in Cook County, much of the river basin was acquired by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County in the early 20th century and then, in the 1930s, landscaped by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) into the Skokie Lagoons Forest Preserve. For a time, the Skokie Lagoons project utilized ten separate CCC companies, making the lagoons the largest CCC project in the United States. The wetlands were dredged and replaced with seven artificial lagoons as much as deep, in line with pastoral landscape appreciation patterns of the time. The lagoons cover in area. The Forest Preserve District took some limited actions in the 1990s to alter some of the lagoons and try to restore a vestige of the original Skokie River wetland terrain.