Hillsdale: the college and the headwater hills

Hillsdale County is named honestly. The land rolls over glacial high ground, and water runs away from here toward two Great Lakes. The county’s recreation plan says local springs and lakes form the beginnings of five rivers: the Grand, Kalamazoo, River Raisin, and two different St. Joseph rivers. The farms roll rather than stretch, and small lakes settle into the low spots between hills.

That geography shows up in the county’s lake map. The recreation plan counts more than 70 lakes over ten acres and more than a dozen over 100 acres. Baw Beese Lake, the largest, sits just southeast of the city. These are not one connected chain. They are separate lakes and wet places scattered across the same rolling divide that feeds the five river systems.

The college date needs a little explanation. Hillsdale College began as Michigan Central College in Spring Arbor in 1844. It moved to Hillsdale nine years later and took its present name. The college says its original charter prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, or sex, a policy it describes as a national first. Central Hall is the familiar hilltop landmark. Poet Will Carleton studied here before his writing about farm life found a national audience.

Together, the college and the headwater landscape explain the place better than either one alone. This is a small college town sitting on one of southern Michigan’s important drainage divides, with the campus above town and Baw Beese Lake just beyond it.