TREES

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Image Credit: Rich Geer

The Old-Growth Forests

Hardwood trees – oak, hickory, beech and maple – up to 400 years old once filled this land. Bodéwadmik (Potawatomi) tapped the sugar maples to make and relied on trees to make a range of items, from tools to dwellings.

Early Euro-American settlers reported trees 200 feet tall and five feet in diameter in the northern part of today's Van Buren County. Pine Grove Mills took its name from the white pine found there.

Today's Forests

Forests seen along the trail today grow in areas that were logged but not suited to farming once the trees were removed. Today's forests are more diverse than the mature old-growth forests, even though some of the trees may be more than 100 years old. The trees include sassafras, white oak, black cherry, sugar maple, black walnut, basswood and elm.

Image Credit: Dick Godfrey

Logging

Commercial logging skipped by this region until the Kalamazoo & South Haven Railroad provided a way to get lumber to market. In Kendall, where logging had already begun, the railroad replaced horse-drawn carts transporting logs 12 miles to Mattawan.

Image Credit: Tom Maas

Bloomingdale sawmill owner Harvey Howard and his brothers, Zeno and Joseph, used his lumber to build a depot for the railroad. In 1874, the mills in town were filling contracts for three million board feet of ash, whitewood and cherry.

What is a wolf tree?

Image Credit: Jeff Green

Single trees spared by farmers when clearing land are known as 'wolf trees.' They are much older and larger than surrounding trees because they did not have to compete for sunlight as they grew. They usually have a large diameter trunk with sprawling lower branches. See if you can spot one along the trail.