Marshall County Memorial Forest

The Marshall County Memorial Forest is located nine miles southwest of Plymouth, on State Road 17. There is a drive on 14th Road which leads to a parking lot and an informational sign. There is also a walking path through the forest. It is now under the jurisdiction of the Marshall County Parks and Recreation Department.

How did it get started? Beavers are somewhat responsible for establishing the forest. Years ago the Department of Conservation released a group of beavers. A colony of those beavers went about three miles down the Yellow River and made a pool from a small creek there that was fed by springs. Their occupancy of the area did not go unnoticed. Sam Jones, a local farmer who lived north of Burr Oak on the Yellow River, noticed quaking aspen trees being cut down in a small swamp across his line fence in a manner that beavers would use. Luke Duddleson, a county highway maintenance man, noticed that something was plugging up a culvert leading to the river faster than he could clean it out.

Investigation by wildlife authority Russ Fisher and Robert Kyle, a journalist who lived in Culver, showed that the beavers had built a dam where the water backed up and had created a 10–15-acre pond. The tract of land was considered worthless, with mostly blow-sand and a few apple trees. There was a small stream that trickled from a spring at the back of the property. The beavers had even built a second dam behind the culvert to keep their work from being removed.

This pond was still there in 2010, according to Mike Boys’ May 28 column that year, from which I took much of this information. The dam had grown to be 160 feet long and twelve feet in diameter. The huge mound rose above the water about seven feet and housed approximately sixty beavers.

The County Council of Conservation was a group formed by the conservation clubs of Marshall County. In 1944 this group met at the Maxinkuckee Fish and Game Club and submitted a petition to the Marshall County Commissioners requesting that they purchase 79 acres located at State Road 17 and 14th Road. The beaver colony and its dam were mentioned in the petition, and it was stated that they had done no harm to the farms in that vicinity. The county commissioners purchased the land on January 18, 1946, for $1,600. The State of Indiana sold an additional acre to make it an even eighty acres. The legal description of the land was given as the S half of the SE quarter of Section 28 of West Township.

Twenty-two Marshall County conservation clubs raised the necessary $250.00 to buy trees from the Division of Forestry. Volunteers, including Boy Scouts and conservation club members, planted 35,000 trees. There were ninety-two special trees to be planted for the 92 servicemen from Marshall County who lost their lives in World War II. The memorial planting was to be carried out on a strip of the plot along Road 17 where the 92 trees were to be planted for the fallen servicemen. The 92 trees were to stand in a space between the beaver colony and a separate forest of pines and spruce along State Road 17. The various conservation clubs were to provide gates, walks and trails and signs identifying the different trees. A park was planned at the entrance.

The County Forestry Committee organized the volunteers, and the trees were planted over several weekends, starting March 21, 1946. Purdue University furnished a tree planting machine. Farmers used their tractors to pull the tree planting

machine. Other volunteers followed the machine, straightening trees that were not planted erect, and covering exposed roots with earth. Nearly onefifth of the area was hand planted due to the roughness of the terrain. The work was compared to an old-fashioned barn raising, as everyone helped to get the job done.

Marshall County was the first county in the state of Indiana to acquire land and establish a forest under the 1943 state law permitting counties to acquire and maintain wooded tracts of land. The law permitted counties to hold wooded tracts of land under the concept that the land would address both conservation efforts and be used for recreational and memorial purposes. For more than 50 years Marshall County remained the only county in Indiana to have a memorial forest until Starke County created one. The Marshall County Memorial Forest is special in another way, in that it is the first living war memorial in the State of Indiana. The land was dedicated in November 1949 to those 92 servicemen who lost their lives in World War II.

The sign for the Memorial Forest on State Road 17 was erected in November 1949. The sign is painted wood and is 5 feet x 10 feet and weighs approximately 7000 pounds. County highway workers had to help erect it.

In November 1995 a timber inventory appraisal and management plan was done by Wakeland Forestry Consultants. The map that was made at that time showed a large pond, four acres of black oak, three acres of soft maple and pin oak, sixteen acres of low ground hardwoods, 24 and one half acres of red pine and four acres of jack pine.

In November 2017 Boy Scout Daniel Stauffer, with a grant provided by the Marshall County Community Foundation, created a new sign and parking area for the Marshall County Memorial Forest as his Eagle Scout project.

Park your car, walk down the path and think about those who gave their lives for us. You might even see a beaver or two.