Plaster Creek Family Park

Est. 1923

Ken-O-Sha, “Water of the wall eyed pike,” is the Native American name for Plaster Creek. In 1923, the park extended west as far as Division Ave. At this time, the City looked to acquire a 25-acre tract of creek land called Peck Woods. Soon accomplished, a road was built through the tract using local Scrip Labor. In 1963, Ken-O-Sha Elementary was built, and in 1972, the area near the school, with its two quarter-mile trails, became the Ken-O-Sha Nature Park.

Legend states that Chief Black Bird took a Baptist missionary by canoe up Ken-O-Sha Creek to a waterfall, and told the Great Spirit who created this beauty. The missionary, while there, collected some of the gypsum there and set it to Detroit where a geologist confirmed the stone could be ground to plaster and sold. Long after Black Bird left the area, the name of the waters became Plaster Creek, the pollution thereof banishing the Ken-O-Shay, or wall-eyed pike.