A little bit of wilderness preserved in Huron County
Jim DuFresne
Lansing Buried halfway down on the homepage of the Huron County Nature Center website is a line that best sums up this unusual preserve at the tip of Michigan’s Thumb: “A short drive to wilderness.”
Located only two hours from the northern part of Metro Detroit and an even shorter drive from Flint and Saginaw, the nature center is a 280-acre oasis of woods and wetlands in an area of the state known mostly for sugar beets, navy beans and the sandy beaches of Saginaw Bay.
The county has owned a portion of the land since 1941, and from the beginning was jealously guarded by the local chapter of the Federation of Women’s Clubs. During a half century of stewardship, the federation called the original 120 acres a “wilderness arboretum” – a place where the natural environment is preserved and unaltered – and thus the organization vigorously opposed all attempts to develop the area.