Flint Photos: Corner of Hamilton and Iowa on the East Side

Nature Returns to Buick City

Gerry Godin, the creator of the excellent All Things Buick blog, sent me this photo that he took on July 15 at the old Division Street gate off Hamilton Avenue. It's hard to believe that this spot, once a congested entrance to the massive Buick factory complex, the geographic heart of Flint, is now a place where the deer (and the antelope?) play or, in this case, die.

I've written several posts about the return of wildlife in Michigan as the population declines and parts of Detroit and Flint empty out and return to nature. There was one about red foxes and another about beavers. Carriage Town resident Michael Freeman told me about deer nibbling at the lilac bushes in his side yard, the former site of 3rd Avenue Fish & Chips, when I was visiting Flint a few summers back. It shouldn't be all that surprising given how overgrown and wild parts of Flint are these days. When people leave, nature reasserts itself.