Behind Eberwhite Elementary School on Ann Arbor's west side, thirty-two acres of oak-hickory forest have stood largely undisturbed since before the city existed. The trees here have never been clear-cut. Three ponds hold spring peepers and turtles. A mushroom species discovered in 1965 carries the woods' name into the scientific record and has never been found anywhere else on Earth.
This is a history of how that land came to be what it is - from the Potawatomi and Wyandot people who first tended it, through Mr. Eber White's farm and the University of Michigan's forestry laboratory, to the school district that has held it in trust since 1946 and the community that keeps making that trust mean something. It is also, in small part, a story about what it takes to keep a piece of wild land alive in the middle of a city. The answer, more often than not, is simply people who care.