Al Sabo: 25 miles of trail sitting on top of Kalamazoo's drinking water

Eighteen wellheads sit hidden in the woods of the Al Sabo Land Preserve, and the whole 700-plus acres exists to protect them. This stretch of Texas Township is the recharge ground for the Atwater wellfield — the sandy soil and wetlands soak up rain and feed the aquifer that a good share of Kalamazoo drinks from. The city started buying the land in the late 1960s, more than 740 acres of it, after Albert Sabo, who ran Kalamazoo’s utilities department from 1922 until 1969, pushed to set it aside before houses and septic tanks could foul the water under it.

The result is a rare thing: a working piece of municipal infrastructure that doubles as one of the best places to walk in the county. About 25 miles of trail wind through hardwoods, conifer stands, open meadow, and marsh. The wetlands here are the headwaters of the West Fork of Portage Creek, so on a wet spring day you’re standing right where the creek begins.

Mountain bikers learned the hard way that the preserve has limits. Heavy riding chewed up the trails badly enough that the place closed in 1992, and it only reopened in 1993 once everyone agreed bikes would stay on roughly seven of the 25 miles. North of the land bridge, no wheels at all — just boots. That truce has held for thirty years.

Walk it on a gray weekday and the appeal is obvious: ridgelines of beech and maple, a marsh loud with frogs, and the strange knowledge that the ground holding you up is also holding the town’s water. Locals have a fond nickname for one swampy hollow where odd cast-off objects keep turning up — the “Land of Lost Things.” Most of what’s lost out here, though, is just the sound of traffic.