For centuries, Native Americans hunted and fished in the area now known as Lyndon Township, where numerous lakes and ponds provided abundant food. European settlers began arriving in 1833, nearly a decade after eastern Washtenaw County was settled, and in 1837 the township had 361 residents; forty years later that number had only doubled. Because of its small population, Lyndon never developed a town center, and residents attended church and conducted business in nearby Chelsea, Dexter, Unadilla, and Waterloo through much of the 19th century. Farming defined the rural community for much of its history as oak and hickory were cleared for agriculture and timber, and local soils produced wheat, corn, oats, barley, potatoes, hay, and fruit. During the Great Depression, the federal government began buying failed farms for recreation, and the land was eventually turned over to the National Park Service, which created trout ponds, duck ponds, and other recreational facilities; these lands later became the Waterloo and Pinckney Recreational Areas. In the early 1940s, the National Park Service leased area land indefinitely to the State of Michigan for park use. Today agriculture remains part of Lyndon Township, but 52% of its land is publicly owned, with lakes used for swimming, fishing, and boating and trails linking its hills and valleys. In 1934, George Leonard Reith bought about 140 acres that now form the westernmost part of Park Lyndon after his great-uncle Wilber Garner had leased the land and built a cottage there. Leonard Reith, who had spent summers there as a boy, later said he paid his first year's taxes on the property with money earned by selling pears from trees near North Territorial Road, the last of which was removed in 2008. On the farm he raised horses, at one time nearly thirty, used the land for grazing and crops, and dug minnow ponds on the eastern edge of the property in the 1940s. In the 1990s, Leonard and his wife Geraldine Carr Reith sold the land to The Nature Conservancy to prevent development, and in 1999 Washtenaw County bought 130 acres from the conservancy, making Park Lyndon one of the largest acreage parks in the county park system.