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Kalamazoo County MI

• 03.18.08
  Andrew Hays’ land is up for sale again
  Kalamazoo County MI (0)

  This was from my first photo stop on Sunday afternoon's bike ride, about 12 miles from home. The land for sale is on Climax Prairie in Kalamazoo County. I suppose the scene doesn't look very interesting, but the place is interesting to me because of a much earlier land sale. Andrew Hays of Marshall, MI was the first buyer, perhaps in 1832. His big stone house built later in the 1830s still stands in Marshall. He bought a lot of land for investment purposes. He later joked about how during the Black Hawk war, he ...
  
  
• 02.06.08
  Making it difficult to buy land from the government
  Calhoun County MI, Kalamazoo County MI, St. Joseph County MI (0)

  This is the house that Andrew and Clarissa Hays built in Marshall, MI in the 1830s. At the time of the Black Hawk war they were still living in a log cabin. It was not at this site, though possibly it was as near as a block or so away. (This photo is from a July 2005 bike ride.) The house was built a little afterwards. Andrew Hays was a physician. He came to Michigan with money, which he invested in land. He later told that when the militia company from Marshall had gone ...
  
  
• 01.11.08
  Different flavors of oak savanna
  Kalamazoo County MI (0)

  Tuesday evening Myra and I went to watch the MSU Spartans men's basketball team have a harder time than it should have beating the Purdue Boilermakers. We like Purdue because West Lafayette is right next door to several good sites related to the Black Hawk story. East Lansing does not have such good history connections for this blog. But we're Spartans fans, anyway. We scored some tickets for the Breslin Center when they became available at the last minute. The game was a late one, so we took advantage of the opportunity to first walk over to the map library to ...
  
  
• 12.05.07
  Section 11, Climax Township
  Kalamazoo County MI (0)

  This is a piece of OP Avenue, south of Climax, that I had never paid any attention to. It's paved, even though the old UniversalMap doesn't show it as paved. Now I can show it on my own maps as one that's bicycleable. Maybe I can use it as part of an alternate route to Leroy Township or Athens. I'll have to ride down to the end and see if the roads it connects to are now paved, too. Not just yet, though. There is too much snow and ice on the roads now, ...
  
  
• 12.03.07
  Climax Prairie trails
  Kalamazoo County MI (0)

  After leaving Section 28, I wanted to get as close as I could to Potter Lake, because that's where the story of the naming of Climax Prairie took place: Some time in April or May, 1831, Judge Eldred, Daniel B. Eldred, Hiram Moore, and Calvin White visited the prairie, and made a thorough examination of it. Night overtook them and they camped on the east bank of a beautiful clear lake, which lay near the trail just west of the prairie, now known as Potter's Lake. Before leaving they proposed to name the prairie, and each in turn suggested a name. ...
  
  

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