Preserve Description

This preserve protects a picturesque high south bank of the St. Joseph River, the ravines of Davis Fisher Creek and an old-growth maple woods with sugar maple, tulip, red and white oak, beech, ash and sycamore. Spring brings a carpet of wildflowers beneath the trees: spring beauty, large-flowered trillium, cut-leaved toothwort and many more.

Alwilda “Wilda” McNabb Walter cherished this land to which she had a lifelong connection. Born on the McNabb homestead in 1903, she and her husband, Martin Walter, purchased her parents’ home and farm in 1944. The property’s sugar maple woods was used for a maple syrup business, and today there are still remnants of the sugar camp. In 1982, the couple donated the old homestead and farm to ACRES to forever protect the special place they called home.