Celery Flats: when Portage fed America its celery

Before Portage was a city of subdivisions and office parks, it was mud — glorious, black, money-making muck. In the late 1800s, Dutch immigrant farmers discovered something. The drained wetlands along Portage Creek grew the best celery in America. The Kalamazoo area became the nation’s “Celery City,” shipping trainloads of the crunchy stuff across the country. Pale Michigan celery was a delicacy. Vendors hawked it to railroad passengers like candy.

Portage keeps that improbable chapter alive at Celery Flats, a historical area along the creek. An interpretive center tells the muck-farming story there. Beside it sits a gathered village of local landmarks. There’s an 1856 one-room schoolhouse, a 1931 grain elevator, and a hay barn turned event space. Around it spreads the city’s park system. Portage quietly does parks better than almost any Michigan city its size. The paved Bicentennial Trail follows the creek past the Flats. It links lakes, woods, and downtown. The celery’s mostly gone. The flats are better company than ever.