Millennium Park: a 1,400-acre park dug out of gravel pits

For decades, the land southwest of downtown Grand Rapids was a place you took things out of, not somewhere you went. Crews dug it for gravel and for gypsum — the soft white mineral that gets ground into drywall and plaster — leaving behind worn-out pits and flooded holes where the digging stopped. Today that same ground is Millennium Park, about 1,400 acres of it, one of the largest urban parks in the country.

The reclaiming took years. The county started turning the pits and ponds into a public park in the late 1990s, and it opened in 2004. The old mining lakes are the trick of the whole place: the swimming beach and splash pad sit on water that used to be a gravel quarry, which is also why the bottom can fall away steeply not far from shore.

The park runs along six miles of the Grand River and touches four cities at once — Grandville, Wyoming, Walker, and Grand Rapids — so it ends up being the shared backyard for a big slice of metro Grand Rapids. There’s a boathouse with kayak and paddleboard rentals, picnic shelters, and close to 18 miles of paved trail that tie into the wider regional network, so you can ride from the beach clear out of the park if you want.

A car will cost you a seasonal entry fee in the busy months, and the beach keeps its own summer hours. Pack for a day: between the water, the trails, and the boathouse, the gravel pits give back more than they ever gave up.