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Park established 1969 – present
The Nature Center at Potato Creek State Park is a history museum wearing a naturalist's hat. The park, at 25601 State Road 4 in Liberty Township, was established in 1969 on what was primarily farmland, and its reservoir was created in 1977 (DNR park history). Its nature center runs interpretive services and a wildlife observation area, and its exhibit program, as visitors' records and the DNR's own event listings show, is half natural and half human history: a panel titled "Dream Come True" recounts Darcy Worster's decades-long effort to create the lake — the name is spelled "Darcey" in one visitor's photographic record and "Darcy" in the park's standard histories, and both spellings print here — and an exhibit wall titled "Since Time Immemorial" covers Indigenous lifeways and plants of Potato Creek. The center's September programming includes an Archaeology Day: artifacts found within the park on display in the auditorium, atlatl throwing outside the nature center, and a naturalist stationed at the Schrader Springhouse showing artifacts uncovered from that house's reconstruction. A staff title states the function plainly — the park's programs are led by a "Naturalist Historian," Tim Kraegel in the DNR's 2023 event record, whose Naragon Red Barn tour presents the barn as "the oldest man-made structure still standing at Potato Creek State Park" and reads the land's settlers and agricultural history off it.