OSR Resources FACQs

Q? What camp previously occupied the present site of Camp Blackhawk prior to 1980?

A: Camp Wilderness which was most recently a lone troop camp but at one time was a staffed camp with a camp lodge located on a bluff overlooking Big Blue Lake, ie. Barrett Wendell Lodge. You can still find some of the old fireplace bricks strewn through BH Site #5 on what is known today as the "Wilderness Hill".

A: Camp Manistee, a previous Girl Scout camp north of Owasippe, who gave it to Owasippe as a token of its gratitude for helping move out and store camp program equipment in the "11th hour" when its property was sold off twenty years ago.

Just off of Russell Road and directly across from the two track entrance to Camp Hiawatha Beach is an entrance leading down into Paradise Valley, a unique ecosystem and cedar and hemlock forest that thrives off of the nutrients and springs provided by what many believe to be the resurfacing waters of Gerken Creek that flows out of Big Blue Lake. By the north entrance of the red trail leading down to the valley are the steel shoes which supported the four posts of a previous US Forestry Service fire watchtower. Also, adjacent to where that tower stood is a brass US Geologic Survey benchmark noting one of the highest points in the township, an elevation of 208.4 feet above sea level.

A: Cleveland Creek has two forks that feed into the south part of Lake Wolverine, sometimes called Cleveland Lake on federal maps. The East Fork emanates from an area known as Many Springs and the moraine in the Bass Lake area. The West Fork flows from an area called "The Jungle" near Holton Whitehall Road and through the Quaking Bogs and The Marl Beds and is "where the rippling singing waters fall" as depicted in the song, "The Owasippe Chant".

A: From the 1994 Jim Marshall topographic map and geographic history: Muskegon County gets its name "muskeg" from the Potawatomi term for a bog, a wetland, that shakes and quivers. Hence the name given to the marshy area east of Camp Reneker by the Marl Beds. Bogs are wetlands that have a distinctive vegetation growing on a bog mat. As you walk across this type of bog, the surrounding trees and vegetation shake and quake because the mat is composed of vegetation floating on water several feet down beneath the surface you are walking on.
The danger inherent in these bogs is that you may break through the mat into the deep cold water below.

These unique lowland and wetland areas are the best places at Owasippe to study undisturbed nature because they were not displaced by lumbering activities in the 1870s which devastated the forest of its stands of virgin white pine. You can thank the Chicago Fire for creating such a demand for West Michigan timber. The bogs, however, were untouched because they would not support heavy wagons and horses and downed logs. Bogs are interesting because they show the complicated relationship between the different plant communities that grow at Owasippe. Over thousands of years, dead plants filled in these bogs with more peat and muck. Where this organic material met the surface of the water, that is where the bog began along with its unique vegetation.