The Muskegon River Watershed, one of Michigan’s largest at over 2,700 square miles, feeds Michigan’s second longest river from headwaters in the Higgins/Houghton Lakes area of Roscommon County. The South Branch of the Muskegon River flows through the City of Muskegon’s Richards Park and continues another quarter mile into Muskegon Lake. In the mid to late nineteenth century, Muskegon was a destination for logs gathered from the watershed and floated downriver, and Muskegon lumber was said to have helped rebuild Chicago. Richards Park, named in 1941 for Muskegon County Parks Commissioner Wright W. Richards, occupies the site of a former sewage treatment plant. During the early 2000s, funding from NOAA Coastal Marine American Recovery and Reinvestment Act restored half an acre of emergent/upland habitat, half an acre of open water wetlands, three hundred ninety feet of natural shoreline, and removed one acre of fill.