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Maps!

It's been 3 weeks, loyal readers!  It's been a crazy 3 weeks.  I'll spare you the boring details, except to say that I'm officially on a totally new schedule and cannot devote my Mondays and Tuesdays to researching this blog anymore.  I really want to do my best to keep this up and active, as I'm immensely enjoying digging into Holland's seedy underbelly (but no, not really).  I don't feel right writing about racial injustices in Holland or Ottawa County, so I've been avoiding those topics (though I really, really want to see what I can turn up).  I'll get to those when I can fully research them, and when I feel comfortable with the amount of information that I will have absorbed.

For now, I want to share some 1973 quadrant maps that I found online, ages ago, from the State of Michigan:

The westermost shows Park, Port Sheldon, and Laketown Townships' the Holland State Park area along the lakeshore; the Waukazoo area; and most of Lake Macatawa.  Compared to present day, there's a lot of undeveloped area in the Allegan County area south of 32nd Street, towards the bottom of the map, and many undeveloped areas north of town into Port Sheldon Township.  Of note, we see that 32nd Street is called Ottagon in this map, and that Lakeview Elementary was actually called "Lakeside School" at some point.

The second map shows us the Downtown Holland area, as well as Downtown Zeeland, and parts of Holland, Zeeland, Olive, and Blendon Townships, as well as Overisel and Fillmore Townships to the south.  I didn't know that Overisel had oil fields until I found these maps.  What fascinates me is the immensely varying terrain in this section.  You can witness the low, flat area around the Holland metro area start rising into ridges and valleys in the more rural areas.



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