Eber White Woods Saved To Ann Arbor

Eber White Woods Saved To Ann Arbor

EBER WHITE WOODS, 344 acres of native woods on West Liberty St., at the city limits, is to be preserved for public recreation and nature study. That is assured by the Board of Education's acceptance of the tract as a gift from the University.

Previously the University had offered the woodland to the City Council in exchange for 25 acres at the city airport. That offer was given the silent treatment by the aldermen, supposedly because of the exchange provision. There were reasons to believe that had the City Council appeared in a receptive mood, the University might have withdrawn the trade proposition and made the city a free gift of the woods, as has now been done through the acceptance of its offer by the Board of Education. In any event, despite the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the council, this remnant of the native timber that once covered the hills of Ann Arbor will remain in the ownership of the people and be saved for their pleasure and profit.

Possession by the municipality might have been more satisfactory than possession by the Board of Education. The woods would fit admirably into the city park system. The Board of Education, on the other hand, has no established park administration machinery.

It will have to set up maintenance facilities as well as means of policing the tract.

But, Eber White Woods will remain an attractive part of Ann Arbor. It will be a smaller companion piece on the west side of the east side Arboretum which serves both the University and the community as an outdoors resort—for hiking, picnicking, and communing with nature.

SOME DAY, when Ann Arbor has grown outward and become more thickly settled, Eber White Woods may attain values unseen by many of us today. Then we may be particularly grateful that the University’s offer was accepted in a way that keeps the woods in public possession. Just as the people of Grand Rapids are grateful that hesitant aldermen many years ago did not turn down the gift of the John Ball Forty, a hilly, wooded area comparable in size to Eber White Woods. That Forty, accepted most reluctantly and with much debate, has been developed into John Ball Park, which through the years has been a popular and much prized playplace of the Furniture City and long the envy of other communities far and wide.

A growing community must look the needs of the future as well as the present. Ann Arbor cannot have in reserve too much park land.