Lower Town Parks, Recreation, and Trails

Lower Town Parks, Recreation, and Trails. . , Green Open Space, paths, trails, and recreational activities have always been a part of Lower Town life. In the 19th century the Huron River, nearby farms, orchards, hills, forests, creeks, and open roads were only a short walk away from what are now historic homes. The Huron River shaped an experience of dams, millrace activity, parks, ponds, walking trails, boating, fishing, and swimming. One could live and play in Lower Town with a sense being separate - oblivious to urban growth up the hill on the south side of the river., In 1914 the Edison Company, as a part of its rebuilding of the Argo Dam, laid out a public bathing beach on the east side of the pond, above the headache to the new Argo Power Substation. The city paid for operation of the bathing beach until it bought the popular facility in 1938., In 1916, after the new dam was finished and the pond refilled, the old canoe livery was moved directly across the pond, remodeled and enlarged. Operated as Saunders until the 1950s and then as Wirth's Canoe Livery around 1960, the interior was famous for its collection of coin-operated orchestrions, melodeons, and other antique mechanical music boxes. In 1970 the city bought the canoe livery. The Wirth building was demolished and the Park Department replaced it with Argo Park Canoe Livery, a bit upstream.