Visitor Information

Park at Mount Baldhead Park and walk north to the end of Park Street. Watch for cars as you walk up the steep, narrow driveway leading to Ox-Bow School of Art.  The trailhead is  at the top of the hill. The loop trail winds through a dune forest and gradually rises to the “Crow’s Nest” overlooking Saugatuck Harbor Natural Area. On the way back, follow a ridge high above the river. The trail gets steep at several points and there are many roots.

Conservation Value

The property protects an emergent marsh, steep forested dunes, and Kalamazoo River shoreline and connects to Saugatuck Harbor Natural Area, creating 275 acres of protected Lake Michigan shoreline habitat. The rare ecosystems in this region are home to many important species of wildlife, fish, birds, insects, and plants. 

In 2018, the Land Conservancy of West Michigan partnered with Ox-Bow and the City and worked with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program) to secure a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grant. Grant funding was used to treat invasive phragmites, non-native European birch and poplar, reed-canary grass, and Japanese barberry. Removal of invasive species is an ongoing project managed by contractors, staff, and volunteers. 

History

Tallmadge Woods is owned by the City of Saugatuck and Ox-Bow School of Art. In 2008, the City and Ox-Bow worked with the Land Conservancy of West Michigan to protect the 102-acre property with a conservation easement to ensure that neither organization, nor later owners, would be able to significantly alter the character and uses of Tallmadge Woods in the future. 

Up until about 1906, the property was a peninsula, surrounded by the Kalamazoo River as it took a bend around the dunes. Once the new channel mouth was created for the River, the property was still largely surrounded by water (the Kalamazoo to the east and north, and the oxbow lagoon to the west) but a small land connection was established with the property to the northwest when the old river channel filled in with drifting sand. Now, the northern portion of the property shares a boundary with the Saugatuck Harbor Natural Area, where the channel used to be.  

The woods haven’t been logged since Ox-Bow School of Art was founded in the early 1900s, and there are large hemlocks, beech, and oak on the property. In 2024, Tallmadge Woods was inducted into the Old-Growth Forest Network.