A restoration project to fix up Muskegon County’s Veterans Memorial park is continuing this year. Those who have been involved say time has taken its toll on the living memorial, which honors veterans lost from Muskegon County, dating back to World War One. The goal is to return the park to its former glory when first dedicated on Armistice Day back in 1934.
“We’re going to ask the governor, and hopefully it will be this year yet, to come back and look at what’s been done, and what we were able to do with this and rededicate this as Michigan’s most beautiful mile again like it held that designation for a long time.”
David Eling, Director of Muskegon County’s Department of Veteran’s Affairs is hoping the county’s Veteran’s Memorial Park can get back its title as “Michigan’s Most Beautiful Mile.” He says he’s happy work will start up again at the park which saw upgrades with a walkway and electrical components just a few years ago. He adds, two grants adding up to about 4 million dollars, will allow the work to move forward, probably after Memorial Day, on restoration of the water way. He says sludge will be removed along with overgrown cattails.
“When the cattails get high, you couldn’t see islands and we have two world war one canons we refinished out there on the islands and you couldn’t even see them in high summer because the cattails had grown so high and stuff.”
Eling says one of the things that made the park the “most beautiful” was the old elm trees. He’s hoping that too can be restored.
“The reason it got most beautiful mile, the whole park, was line with elm trees. They stood real tall, looked like soldiers. It’s almost a mile from tip to tip. And the Dutch elm disease got those some years back and they just died out and now they’re getting a new tree out of Norway or Sweden, that’s resistant to elm disease and they’re going to go back and put all those trees back to line the roadway again in the entire park.”
There will be an informational meeting on May 24th at Muskegon Community College for residents to find out how they help in the restoration or to address any concerns they may have.
