Apple Island, a thirty-five-acre island at the center of Orchard Lake, was formed by glaciers and holds ten thousand years of history and folklore. Before Europeans came to America and settlers moved westward, the Chippewa, Cherokee, and Ottawa visited the island. According to legend, the Chippewa buried Chief Pontiac on an island knoll. The Ottawa called it Menahsagorning, meaning "the place of the apples." The source of its apple trees is uncertain; some historians believe Native Americans brought seeds from New England, while others credit Johnny Appleseed or Antoine De La Mothe Cadillac, who visited in 1701. A few apple trees still remain but do not produce fruit large enough for harvest. The island also has near-record-size willows, cottonwoods, red sumac, sugar maples, hickory, white cedar, and hemlock. Eagles and osprey once nested there, wolves once crossed the winter ice of Orchard Lake, and the island still serves as a sanctuary for birds, a home for small mammals, and a feeding ground for great blue herons, while deer and red fox continue to leave tracks in the snow. For a time, it had the largest cottonwood in Michigan, measuring one hundred twenty-six feet tall with a circumference of two hundred six inches until an ice storm in 1978 destroyed most of it, leaving only the trunk. Between 1825 and 1827, Jerome Galway bought the island from Cherokee and Ottawa Indians for eleven shillings. William Dow purchased it in 1847 and built a house for his sweetheart, John Coats acquired it in 1851 for his son, Colin Campbell bought it in 1856 and lived there for sixty years, and Willis Ward bought it from Campbell in 1916 and discovered nine foundations. After Ward's death, the island passed to his children, and his daughter Marjorie Ward Strong and her husband, General Strong, eventually gained ownership of the entire island and donated it to West Bloomfield Schools in 1970. Remnants of the Campbell and Ward houses and cottages remain, and the island became one of the few places occupied by humans and then given back to nature.