Peck's Gully Investigation and the Mysterious White Lions

DD: "Honey! Guess what I found out! That Peck's Gully thing has stuff sticking out of the ground!"

DDH: "Peck's what?"

DD: "Peck's GULLY--it's that old dump! We have to go see it! It's like a nineteenth-century Superfund site!"

DDH: "Sounds jolly. We're gonna wear Hazmat suits into Highland Cemetery?"

DD: "Nooo, silly, all the bad stuff is gone by now." (Sudden musing) "Like Mrs. Winslow's Soothin' Syrup. That had opium in it. They used to give that to kids!"

DDH: "We're gonna look for opium in a Superfund site?"

DD: "Nooo, honey, we're gonna try and authenticate--"

DDH: "I'm not going unless there's morphine."

DD: (derailed again) "Well, a lot of patent medicines DID have morphine. And cocaine--catarrh powders were mostly cocaine. But for most medicines the thing was booze. (back on track) Wouldn't it be cool to find an old patent medicine bottle? That would be AWESOME!"

DDH: "Almost as awesome as reading my book."

DD: "Honey...if you go to the dump, someone could read a book about YOU--because it'd be such a cool thing! You could be a part of history! You could...I thought..." (lower lip trembles)...

At the cemetery, we reconnoitred the southwest side. We were looking for the elusive white lions that kind reader Siani had alluded to:

You know, if anyone is interested in poking around down there my husband and I found a path down into the gully from the cemetary. We live directly across the street and love to take walks there, or just sit on the porch and admire the view. It's somewhere along the back left side of the cemetary, I think on the path that leads back away from the civil war memorial? There are two small white lions that stand on either side of a little path leading out of the cemetary and down the hill.

DD: (near Civil War Memorial) "We're looking for the Path of the Two White Lions."

DDH: "This is getting very Da Vinci Code."

We wandered along and passed the grave of William McCullough at the back southwest side of the cemetery. No sooner had we passed it when--

DD: "LOOK! THERE THEY ARE!"

The white lions flanked a little path leading back into the woods. We followed it as it wandered down the hill. Five minutes in, we glimpsed a blue thing to the right of the path and investigated. It was a tarp, under a stick lean-to evidently built by kids. Some burned wood and an old chair hinted that this had been a beer-drinking spot. A pair of unmentionables supported this theory. We went back to the path and followed it down.

The path winds down the hill for 15 minutes or so. Then it dead-ends at a small stream, likely spring-fed. Four tree trunks blocked the stream. DDH noted, "Oh, someone built a dam." I wondered. It didn't look like a dam. It looked more like...a barrier. I quietly picked my way down the stream a bit. Through the thick underbrush, just beyond the barrier, not 20 feet away through thick underbrush, I glimpsed a white dome tent (below). I turned to DDH and held a finger up to my lips.

DD: (whispers) "Someone's down there. Either someone's living there or it's some meth lab or something."

DDH: "Backtrack?"

DD: "Yeah!"

We quickly and quietly scooted back up the trail.

Though we had searched for a way to get down into Peck's Gully, the presence of a tent denizen made us vow to seek another route down in the future. We'd seen multiple other paths, but they were impossibly steep. But given time and patience I'm sure we will find a way down that avoids a confrontation with the individual apparently living deep in the woods behind Highland Cemetery.

Why do two white lions mark this trail? Who placed them there? What did they originally signify?

One thing haunted Dusty D on the way down.

About 400 yards from the lions, deep in the woods, there's a huge patch of lilies of the valley.

Although they're native to Michigan, it's also something you see over and over in old or abandoned cemeteries--large, incongruous spreads of lilies of the valley probably originating from just a few plants planted on someone's grave. You may recall that they surrounded Allie McCullough's father's grave (at right). Left to their own devices, the plants often spread throughout the grounds of untended 19th-century cemeteries overcome by woods. I've seen such patches in several places in old Washtenaw County cemeteries.

I also reflected that in the distant past, some cemeteries would refuse to bury, within their consecrated grounds, suicides, lunatics, murderers, or unbaptized babies.

Could these lions mark the entrance to an old, unconsecrated section of the cemetery?

Were the lilies planted a century or more ago on an unmarked grave? Or graves? Planted by someone who, despite the community's attempt to erase and forget that person... remembered?

Peck's Gully, a Forgotten Ypsilanti Garbage Dump

Dumps are historical libraries.

In the disposal of unwanted items, a society or era reveals what it bought, ate, wore, and what it could afford to throw away. Unlike some textual accounts of history, arguably the most political of social sciences, these items are not edited, selectively displayed, distorted, or swept under the rug. The sweepings, and the rug, and the broom for good measure, are there for anyone to find.

For this reason DD is interested in old garbage dumps and was reading today in the Archives of the old city dump south of downtown by the Huron Street-I-94 interchange. In one article, I found this 1961 gem at left. It is a mini-history of how Ypsilantians disposed of their trash before the existence of the I-94-Huron dump.

The selection shown begins by discussing the days of burning what little garbage existed in the woodstove and throwing bones into the ash-pile. It mentions the annual spring clean-up and accompanying bonfires while recyclers came by to collect rags and old metal. But then:

"Then the trek began to Peck's gully, a deep ravine south of Highland cemetery. Friends met there to throw away trash and to chat. Little boys went through the leavings and occasionally unwanted property was exchanged."

A look on a topographical version of Google maps shows two topo lines (highlighed in orange and green) southwest of the cemetery, indicating a steep slope.










When compared with a satellite version of the same image, there is a scarified treeless area.

Was this Peck's gully?

A look at the 1915 plat map (below) shows that the swampy land south of Highland Cemetery was owned by "Peck Bros." It seems likely that this area is Ypsilanti's forgotten dump!

Unable to farm the muck, did the Peck Bros. sell the land to the city for a community dump? Or did they die without heirs and did the city obtain the land and turn it into a dump?

In either case, it looks as though this was probably the spot where, generations ago, Ypsilantians assembled a library of artifacts, otherwise known as a trash dump. What broken tools, empty bottles, china chips, and other weathered fragments of past lives lie forgotten there?