Gompers Park, featuring one of the city’s premier natural restorations, was developed in the mid to late 1920s based on a design by landscape architect Henry J. Stockman. Increasing its significance and that of the two adjacent sites (Gompers Park Expansion and LaBagh Woods) is their location as part of the extensive corridor of protected land along the North Branch of the Chicago River.

A one-acre lagoon is located just east of the parking lot off Keeler Avenue. Water bubbles up from a limestone fountain and waterfall on the east end, and flows slowly through the lagoon. Clumps of native aquatic and wetland vegetation grow along the perimeter of the lagoon, and limestone pavers provide access to the water's edge. This is a good fishing spot. Other aquatic life such as crayfish, dragonfly nymphs, frogs and turtles live in and around the lagoon.

Once the water travels under the red footbridge at the west end of the lagoon, it tumbles down a small waterfall and into a stream that leads into the wetland that runs alongside the North Branch of the Chicago River.

The wetland takes in floodwater from the river on occasion. The natural community here is well-suited to these conditions. Arrowhead, bulrush, pickerelweed, swamp milkweed, and various sedges are among the plants that thrive here. The plants and the soils hold, utilize, and slowly release water which otherwise might flood residential neighborhoods, giving the wetland an additional function beyond providing habitat. Muskrats utilize this habitat. The drier portions of the natural area support cup plant, culver's root and other plants more typical of prairie or savanna.