Maybury

NORTHVILLIANS,

The summer theme continues this week as we celebrate local greenspaces, gardens and waterscapes, our love affair with automobiles and the splendor of the summer season. This week, we will talk about our recreational area known as Maybury State Park.

In our locality, we are fortunate to have not only city and township parks, but a county and a state park to recreate in. Today I will highlight a true gem, our State Park in our own backyard.

Now let’s take a look at the History of Maybury through time…

Maybury State Park is truly an oasis of lush green forests, offering visitors miles of trails and a place to connect with nature.

There is truly something for everyone here. Notably, for seniors & others with walking disabilities, guided-assisted trail walks offer all-terrain motorized chairs, so all can explore its topography and historical markers.

The State acquired the land in 1971 from the City of Detroit. Before that, this site served the community for over 50 years as the Maybury Medical TB center.

Maybury has close to 1000 acres of gently rolling terrain, open meadows and mature forests. The park offers a variety of outdoor recreational opportunities, including extensive trails for walking and biking, horseback riding, cross-country skiing, youth camping, fishing and a working visitor farm, along with many placemaking areas to gather.

Articles going back over 40 years in The Northville Record speak about how the Scouts have used Maybury State Park for hiking, archery, running obstacle courses, educational learning events and overnight camping.

Let’s take a look at some facts about Maybury State Park…

DID YOU KNOW – Before becoming a park, the grounds originally encompassed eight farms, then transitioned to a medical center and eventually a State Park. This Maybury site, for its 50 years as a medical campus, was a complex of 45 buildings on initially 944 acres. It was an all-in-one community, including:

• Multiple Buildings with open air verandas for patients
• Its own powerhouse
• A children’s section and building
• Doctors’ quarters and a nurses’ home
• A school building and women’s dormitory
• Bakery, tinsmith & carpenter shop, and a pasteurization plant for their dairy farm
• An auditorium/chapel and a Fire department.
• It even had its own Library and published a Maybury Monthly magazine.

Total capacities when Maybury was a medical center are as follows:
Up to 844 beds were available for patients, and half of the 478 employees lived on the grounds.

Yearly consumptions at Maybury during this time:

• 5200 tons of coal were burned in the power plant.
• 60 million gallons of water were used.
• 1.2 million pieces of laundry were washed.
• 11.7 tons of soap were purchased.
• 1.5 miles of bed sheets were laundered.
• 27 tons of butter were consumed.
• 45 tons of flour were grown & ground onsite.
• 6 tons of coffee were purchased.
• 31 tons of sugar were used to sweeten the food.

Get out and enjoy Maybury State Park today before summer ends…

You can see through the years that Maybury has meant many things to the community, starting with the original eight local homestead farms, to the construction and 50-year operation of the medical campus, and eventually becoming the State Park as we know it today. I encourage you to slow down and experience all that Maybury has to offer before summer ends – walk, bike, horseback ride, catch a bluegill in the pond … It’s all right here in our own backyard!

Keep that Summer Faith!

Brian Turnbull
Mayor – Northville
BTurnbull@ci.northville.mi.us / 248.505.6849

(Reach out to me anytime or forward this communication to others interested.)

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