Located nine miles south of Hastings, Pierce Cedar Creek Institute is a public environmental education center. The mission of the Institute is to promote environmental education, research, preservation, and appreciation.

The rural property encompasses a diverse 661 acres. There are numerous seasonal opportunities for hiking, skiing, snowshoeing, and observing wildlife on seven miles of trails throughout the natural areas. Facilities at the Institute include an auditorium, classrooms, laboratories, and overnight accommodations.

The property’s previous owner, naturalist Dr. H. Lewis Batts, protected the land from development or degradation, and most of it has remained untouched for the past 50 years. Today, the Institute maintains the property as a preserve under an easement granted by the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy. 

The Visitor Center at the Institute features a common area, an auditorium, a dining room, a 1,000-gallon fresh water aquarium, and gift shop.  The gift shop carries a variety of items, including hand-woven baskets, fair trade goods, birdfeeders, and field guides. Children's items for sale include nature books, craft kits, and Kidorable© umbrellas and raincoats. 

Visitors to the Institute may enjoy a seasonal art exhibit by a local artist or photographer. The Visitor Center also houses a clock collection, amassed by Willard (Bill) G. Pierce, the founder of Pierce Cedar Creek Institute. There are approximately 330 clocks in the Pierce collection; most of them on display in the Visitor Center. Click here for more information about the clocks (932kb PDF).

The Land

Geologically, the landscape at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute was fashioned by the melting, or retreat, of the Huron Lobe glacier. While retreating, this glacier left behind a variety of features including an esker (a stream that develops under the glacial ice), and kettle-hole wetlands, including the 13-acre Brewster Lake. 

The Institute encompasses a wide variety of upland and wetland ecosystems. Upland areas include created prairies, fallow fields, young second growth forests, and mature forests, with beech-maple, mixed hardwoods, and oak. The wetlands are incredibly diverse and include mixed hardwood and conifer swamps, prairie fens, and wet meadows. Since purchasing the property in 1998, the Institute has increased the diversity of more than 70 acres of old fields by planting a variety of native prairie plant species. 

Wetland habitats found on the property are quite diverse. Visitors to the Institute will find wetlands such as tamarack swamp forests, white cedar swamp forests (among the southernmost known in Michigan), shallow and deep marsh wetlands, many acres of prairie fen, a spring-fed trout stream called Cedar Creek, and Brewster Lake itself.

Virtually the entire watershed of Brewster Lake lies within the preserve. The lake is one of the most pristine lakes in the region, notable for its lack of non-native aquatic plants and its completely natural fauna of fish species.