Falling Waters Park History

Falling Waters Historical Park is located on the corner of Hammond and South Cross Roads. A visitor may follow walking paths which lead to a Potowatomi Indian burial ground, the first housing site in Spring Arbor Township dating back to 1831, an authentic log cabin and a medicinal herb garden, a 15 ton granite ribbon rock,

moved to the park from an area near the Potowatomi encampment with the profile of a Potowatomi brave's profile sandblasted into it, and other plaques describing additional history.

Scouts from Troop#144 who built the stone fence surrounding the park earned Eagle badges. One plaque of special interest describes the beginnings of two colleges: the Free Will Baptist College, now Hillsdale College, and the Methodist Episcopal College, now Albion College. Rocks from the foundation of Michigan's earliest college building may be viewed, too. In addition, written histories of the Potowatomi Indians, early settlers, and colleges are all on display in an outdoor shelter. Also available for $10.00 at the Township office is a short history Falling Waters 1825-1845.
The park hours are from "early morn to dewy eve," according to the chair of Spring Arbor Township's Historical Committee, Becky Cunningham, a life-long resident and former postmaster, who also reminds visitors that the toilet and lighting facilities are the same as the Indians: "bushes and the sun." A picnic area is available with water, but visitors must pump their own.

In 1977 while researching local history to compile and publish a township history book, Spring Arbor Township 1890-1980, volunteers discovered significant pieces of history about the Falling Waters Park area lost as early pioneers and their descendants moved from the area. To commemorate the early Indian and pioneer settlers, the Spring Arbor Historical Committee considered erecting a historical marker at the corner of Hammond and South Cross Roads. However, the owners of the property, George and Faith Kline, generously donated two acres in 1992, plans for the park expanded, and in September of 1994 the State of Michigan granted a Michigan Historical marker and listed the current park in the State Register of Historical Sites. The name, "Falling Waters," according to Charles DeLand's History of Jackson County (1903), was the name of the Potowatomi's encampment: thus Falling Waters Park.

In 1997, an 1840's log cabin was moved from the Leslie, Michigan, area, and its dimensions replicated to the size of a cabin built in 1831 by the pioneer family of James Richard Parmeter, who came from Allegheny County in New York State. In 1914, Matilda Parmeter Mann, born February 23, 1831, the third child of eleven, arrived in Spring Arbor with her family in October 1831. Matilda penned her memories as told to her by her family of their arrival in Spring Arbor including the exact measurements of her family's log cabin located "somewhere near Chief Whap-ca-zeek's bark lodges." Todd Holton brought the cabin's logs to Dan Carty's vacant barn on Parsons Road, where they were painstakingly reshaped and numbered by Lloyd Phillips. Gary Videto, with the help of many strong volunteers, a tractor, and a farm trailer, moved the logs to the park. Using Maurice Reighter's equipment, the volunteers assembled the numbered logs on a foundation. Three 70 years plus volunteers, Lloyd Phillips, Lyle Whittaker, and Becky Cunningham, caulked the logs and roofed the cabin, built a storage shed and fruit cellar, and erected a split-rail fence to enclose the park area. The herb garden, planted by Lester and Dorothy Gibbs, contains plants which were used to cure illnesses and to cook by both the Indians and the early settlers.
Early records show that Benjamin Packard in 1831 bought property in this village, and hi 1835, he and two Methodist Episcopal circuit riders, Elijah Pilcher and Henry Colclazer, journeyed on horseback to Detroit to obtain the first charter for an academy from the Michigan Legislative Council, granted on March 23,1835. The academy was to be built on the manual-labor system, but, with the financial crash of 1837-1838, complications arose.

Although Packard's dream never materialized on the Falling Waters Park location, remnants of a foundation may be viewed in the woods at the intersection of Sections 29-30-31-32. Various reasons such as the financial crash and a cholera epidemic may have prompted the change in the plans to build the village and school one-mile south on the Kalamazoo River. First, Dr. Packard had been refused permission to divert White Pigeon Road [M-60] through to the Hammond Road village. Also, a committee of other area pioneers, which had been formed to investigate the feasibility of connecting the Kalamazoo River into a canal connecting the Kalamazoo and St. Joseph Rivers, may have blocked the progress. Eventually New York pioneers in 1837 obtained the 1835 charter and located the college near the Kalamazoo River, but in Albion. A second school, a seminary, was again located at the Falling Waters Park area: this time under the auspices of the Free Will Baptist. Classes began on December 4, 1844, as Spring Arbor Seminary. Five students attended on December 4, 1844.

William R. Smith, an early landowner and an 1831 postmaster (the first recorded), donated 210 acres of farmland for both of these colleges. However, twenty days after the Baptist college opened, Smith died and his heirs reclaimed the acreage. The college was moved to Section 16 on White Pigeon Road, [the present site of Spring Arbor University] and renamed the Michigan Central College. In 1855, the charter was granted to the Hillsdale College founders.

More history on Falling Waters Park