February 21, 2010 by Amy Elliott Bragg
More pictures from Maybury State Park
It was warmer and sunnier at last week’s end, so we went back to Maybury for another shot at finding the History Trail (and better photographic opportunities).
Success!
Near the former Power House. Dodger thought this would be a good place to become entangled.
The former site of the Women’s Dormitory
In the snow, it’s hard to tell what’s part of the trail system and what’s not. This is not, but I didn’t know that starting out.
This is great:
The idea of a radio broadcast system originated in 1932. A transformer was installed, making it possible to carry entertainments and church services to most patient buildings. Patients in the Annex and inmates of the Detroit House of Corrections built the boxes in which resistors and jacks were housed. The network also included a microphone line, enabling the superintendent of the sanitorium to address patients from his office.
I guess I half-expected crumbling buildings or re-purposed structures, even though I knew going in that only three or four of the original structures are still standing. My imagination refused to let my reading brain believe that the whole thing had been completely dismantled, but besides the trails themselves, many of which were roads and walkways through the complex, everything is groomed and grown over with decades-old forest. And even I know it was a rustic place to begin with, it still seems pretty miraculous to me that such a big man-made place can look so wild in just a generation or so.