Wesselman Woods Survival

 

 

Wesselman Woods Nature Preserve in Evansville, Indiana, represents a rare survival of primeval forest within an urban environment. Originally home to indigenous tribes and later shaped by pioneer settlement and failed infrastructure projects like the Wabash and Erie Canal, the land remained largely uncleared due to specific family histories and ownership changes. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the property transitioned from private farmland to state-owned hospital grounds before being gifted to the city for recreational use.