A 70-acre stretch of wild land on the north side of Square Lake Road in Troy has officially become Oakland County's 20th county park, capping nearly a decade of negotiations between the Troy school district, a regional land conservancy, and county officials. Turtle Woods, tucked between John R and Dequindre roads, is now slated to open to the public in fall 2027, complete with trails, boardwalks, restrooms, and a trailhead built on land the school district once eyed for a third high school that was never built.
According to ClickOnDetroit, Oakland County Parks announced it finalized the purchase of Turtle Woods after the Oakland County Parks and Recreation Commission approved the park's concept plan. The deal also folded in a 1.67-acre residential parcel on Square Lake Road that will serve as the park's entry point and parking lot, according to Oakland County. Construction is expected to begin in spring 2027, with the site opening to visitors that fall.
Getting to this point required threading together local, philanthropic, and state money. The Troy school district contributed nearly $1.9 million in property value toward the sale, per the same ClickOnDetroit report, while the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund provided a $2.2 million grant to support the project. That state funding traces back to Michigan House Bill 4392, signed in May 2025, which appropriated $41.7 million from oil, gas, and mineral lease revenues for 85 land projects statewide, as reported by C & G Newspapers.
A School Board Vote Unlocked the Money
The financial mechanism traces to a January 2024 vote, when the Troy Board of Education agreed to donate 50 percent of the property's value — roughly $1.875 million — to Oakland County Parks. That donation, C & G Newspapers reports, allowed the county to secure state funding after an initial 2023 grant application had been denied. The school district had originally acquired the land more than 50 years ago, in 1967, for possible expansion that never materialized.
Troy school leaders pushed for the transfer in part because invasive plant species creeping in from adjacent subdivisions were threatening the site, and the district lacked the specialized ecological expertise to restore the habitat on its own, the outlet's earlier coverage found. Overgrown invasive species had already made the informal trails difficult to navigate. Six Rivers Land Conservancy stepped in to secure and hold the properties during the grant process, then transferred them to Oakland County Parks once funding and sale agreements were completed. The conservancy, which works across six watersheds in northern Metro Detroit — including the Belle, Clinton, Flint, Huron, Rouge, and Shiawassee rivers — described the site's lakeplain prairie ecosystem as extremely rare and unique to the Great Lakes region.
A Vanishing Habitat, Preserved
That description lines up with state data. Lakeplain wet prairie is among the most endangered natural communities in the Great Lakes region, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, with only about 745 acres — roughly 0.6 percent — remaining of an estimated 158,000 acres present in Michigan in the early 1800s. Most of that historic prairie was lost to 19th-century agricultural drainage and suburban development.
Turtle Woods also provides habitat for the Blanding's turtle, a species listed as Special Concern by the state of Michigan and currently under review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for potential federal Endangered Species Act protection, per the Michigan Natural Features Inventory. The preserve's more than 40 acres of wetlands feed directly into the Clinton River Watershed, offering stormwater retention and natural filtration before draining into Lake St. Clair, according to Oakland County.
What County Officials Are Promising
Oakland County Board Chair David T. Woodward called the addition of Turtle Woods into the county parks system a creative solution to preserve a thriving local habitat, and said the board is fully committed to investing in natural spaces and giving residents more opportunities to enjoy the outdoors across the county. Oakland County Parks Director Christopher Bunch said the partnerships behind the deal made it possible for Turtle Woods to remain a public resource while preserving its habitat and water-quality functions.
The county plans to submit a final design before running a competitive bidding process for construction. Officials say Turtle Woods will remain a nature discovery park with very limited development, adding only a trailhead, parking, restrooms, accessible trails and boardwalks, and wayfinding and educational features rather than heavier recreational infrastructure.
For more than two decades before its formal transfer, the site functioned informally as the Troy Schools Nature Preserve, where local students, Boy Scouts, and conservation groups built early trails and interpretive signs for ecology classes. That grassroots history now gives way to a permanent public park, one that Oakland County Parks — which manages more than 7,000 acres across its properties — hopes to fund further through a countywide millage increase voters weighed in October 2024 to expand land conservation and trail projects. Turtle Woods joins other recent additions to the county's recreation offerings, following Troy's ice rink push two years ago.
