Spicer Lake Nature Preserve: the birders' purchase, on the state line

1978–2026 · 50840 County Line Road; 320 acres the county counts, 196 the state dedicates

The township's second county park exists because two couples and a bird club wanted a sanctuary: the preserve, in the county's extreme northwest corner on the Michigan line, guards two glacial kettlehole lakes — Spicer and Lancaster — in a wetland basin over ten thousand years old. In 1978, with the Indiana chapter of The Nature Conservancy's and the DNR's assistance, the South Bend Audubon Society bought the original forty acres from the Conservancy and donated the land to the county parks — a second deed in kind in the township's park record — and the ground was dedicated a State Nature Preserve; acquisitions continued through 2004. The acreage prints in its carriers' conflict: the county counts the park at 320 acres; the DNR's nature-preserve directory carries the dedicated preserve at 196 acres — the dedication inside the park, two true numbers measuring different things, printed unmerged. The Schurz Visitor Center was built in 1991 and remodeled in 2004. The county counts over seven miles of trails in its master plan and more than six in its park literature — printed as the county's own variance, not averaged — including a quarter-mile accessible boardwalk into the buttonbush swamp. By the preserve's rule, fishing and boating are prohibited at Spicer Lake — the township's one documented hunting-and-fishing fact is a prohibition, and it prints as the record's shape, next to the trails article's test. The preserve was named a Wetland of Distinction in 2018 by the Society of Wetland Scientists. Its founding generation is named in the paper's record: Tom Stankus, who first heard of the lake at a high school football game in the mid-1970s, and Victor and Marge Riemenschneider, prime movers in the Audubon society's search for a sanctuary — the two couples received a National Audubon Society award for the work, the Tribune's 2005 account as catalogued in the library record. The preserve is the county's birding ground of record — a guaranteed Red-headed Woodpecker, the birding trail says — and the northern anchor of this township's outdoor estate.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph County Parks — the Spicer Lake master-plan documents (2014–2018 and 2019–2023 plans): the 1978 forty-acre purchase from The Nature Conservancy by the South Bend Audubon Society and donation to the Board; acquisitions through 2004; 320 acres; the Schurz Visitor Center built 1991, remodeled 2004; the trails; the Wetland of Distinction, 2018; fishing and boating prohibited (park brochure).
2. Indiana DNR, Division of Nature Preserves directory — the dedicated preserve at 196 acres, St. Joseph County Parks ownership, the two-lake description.
3. Indiana Birding Trail (Spicer Lake) — the 320-acre park, the dedicated preserve, the birding record.
4. South Bend Tribune, 2005, as catalogued in the Michiana library record — Stankus and the Riemenschneiders, the Audubon award, the football-game first hearing.