© Courtesy Waterloo Recreation Area

The Re-Wilding of Waterloo

How Michigan's biggest park was born

by Janet Ogle-Mater

posted 12/18/2012

As early as 1834, pioneers bought up tracts of government land and began clearing it for farms in what is now the Waterloo Recreation Area. A hundred years later, during the Great Depression, many descendants of these pioneers found it difficult, if not impossible, to continue to make a living on the land. Many farmers left their fields unplanted or abandoned

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