In the late 1950’s gravel mining and commercialism threatened Cooper’s Glen, so a group of community leaders came together to purchase the land and establish an outdoor environmental education center that would become known as the Kalamazoo Nature Center—one of the first nature centers in the country.

     Dr. H. Lewis Batts, Jr. was a nationally known environmentalist at the time and the driving force behind the purchase of Cooper’s Glen and the incorporation of the Kalamazoo Nature Center in 1960.  Dr. Batts continued to serve as the center’s volunteer Executive Director until his retirement in 1989 when Dr. Willard M. Rose was hired to lead the organization into the future.

     Today The Kalamazoo Nature Center, recognized by its peers as one of the top nature centers in the country, has expanded to include 1,100 acres of wooded, rolling countryside five miles north of Kalamazoo, Michigan.