Words from the Past

Michigan's Most Polluted River

For more than 40 years, citizens, state officials and newspapers were appalled by the condition of the Kalamazoo River, including its principal tributary in the City of Kalamazoo, Portage Creek. Studies repeatedly found few if any fish in a 20-mile stretch downstream of the city because of massive contamination from paper industry wastes and municipal sewage. Although described as "grossly polluted" in the 1930s, the river did not benefit from real cleanup until the late 1960s. Other industries also contributed to the insults against the river.

"Sportsmen were enraged, the public was shocked, and demands for 'a pollution law with teeth' were heard after the announcement in September that the Kalamazoo river between Battle Creek and Kalamazoo had been poisoned by the dumping of 5,000 gallons of zinc cyanide solution. An estimated 20,000 fish were killed, and lives of all persons or animals which came in contact with the fish were threatened…The river was banned to fishing and swimming, and authorities kept a constant watch along more than 20 miles of the river for several days after the poisoning. Dead fish littered the banks of the river."

-- Kalamazoo Gazette, January 1, 1948

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Charles W. Garfield of Grand Rapids is credited with first proposing a state forest preserve in 1881, 20 years before the Legislature finally acted. As President of the Forestry Commission from 1899-1909, he persistently advocated the replanting of Michigan's forests.

"An individual can hardly be expected to begin an operation that shall find its completion in some succeeding generation, but the State goes on forever. It can make investments that shall bring returns a century hence, and wait for the returns…The contagion of active interest in forestry affairs, of tree planting, conservation of natural beauty, should spread rapidly, and legislators should be impressed with the importance of protective laws, and the officers to whom is entrusted the enforcement of laws should find it unpopular to do anything else than their whole duty."

-- from "A Little Talk about Michigan Forestry," 1900