Duncan Woods and the Grand Trunk Depot
Near Grand Haven, Michigan
Grand Haven holds onto its past in two very different places. Up on a hillside sits Duncan Woods, about forty acres of rare old-growth forest, some of its towering hemlocks and beeches more than two hundred years old. It survives because of a gift.
In nineteen thirteen, a widow named Martha Duncan deeded the woods to the people of Grand Haven as a memorial to her late husband Robert, hoping it would remain a natural park forever. Today the forest is part of the national Old-Growth Forest Network. Down by the water, the town keeps its history in the old Grand Trunk Railroad depot, a handsome building from eighteen seventy that once served the cross-lake ferries.
From nineteen seventy-two it housed the Tri-Cities Historical Museum, which tells the story of Grand Haven, Spring Lake, and Ferrysburg and has since moved most of its exhibits to a larger building on Washington Avenue. One is a cathedral of old trees, the other a depot full of memory, and together they hold the long story of this river town.
