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"WALK" Urban Nature Route 
"Winchell - Asylum Lake - Kleinstuck"

The WALK Urban Nature Route is the ODWNA's "Quick Win" project; a city-funded project that was approved after the completion of the ODWN Neighborhood Plan, which was approved for inclusion in the City's Master Plan in June 2020 by the Kalamazoo City Commission.

Quick Win projects are meant to achieve a Neighborhood Plan vision or implement plan goals and are in alignment with the Strategic Vision and 2025 Master Plan.  The WALK Nature Route aligns with the following sections of our Neighborhood Plan:

• Environmental Responsibility: Increase Access to Green Space and Parks, p.44
• Connected Neighborhood:  Inter-Neighborhood Connectivity, p.33

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OF SPECIAL NOTE:
The WALK Urban Nature Route mirrors some of the grounds of the Potawatomi Tribe Reservation.

• When European settlers arrived in the area that was to become Kalamazoo County, the land was occupied by the Potawatomi Tribe, a branch of the greater Algonquin Peoples.

 

• The Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians (Gun Lake Tribe) is part of the historic Three Fires Confederacy, an alliance of the Pottawatomi (Bodewadmi), Ottawa (Odawa) and Chippewa (Ojibwe). Tribal Nations in the Great Lakes region are also known as the Neshnibek, or original people. Learn more about the history of the Gun Lake Tribe HERE. 

 

• The original boundaries of the 19th century Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Pottawatomi reservation covers nine square miles.  Below is a map of the reservation along with a rough guide as to where present-day roads follow its borders