When the word “creek” comes to mind, one will likely think of many things. A warm summer day spent dipping your feet in the cool water, childhood games of building rafts, and hours spent relaxing and listening to the babbling of the water and the calls of the various critters who call it home. However, did you ever consider the possibility of burying a creek, forcing it to flow through subterranean pipes, hiding it from the surface and denying it the light of the sun, eventually destined to be forgotten by the world at large? As unconventional as it may seem, this is exactly what has happened in many American cities in a process referred to as culverting. However, in some cases, local efforts can make us aware of these secret streams. In some parks of Grand Rapids, MI, one can find green sound-boxes such as these,
These sound boxes have been put into place by a collaborative effort called Sound Underground; led by Kate Levy, an artist and documentarian from Michigan, included the work of the Coldbrook Creek Community, Friends of the Grand Rapids Parks, the Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians, Daniel Sharp, and many others. This project was conducted in order to bring attention the Coldbrook Creek, a stream that has historically flowed through the area of downtown Grand Rapids, MI that was mostly culverted underground in the 1920’s. In order to learn more about this creek and others like it, I decided to visit the various parks that host these sound-boxes, starting from the most upstream location and following it downstream. If you would like to follow along at home, the Coldbrook Creek Community has graciously hosted all of the sound clips from the boxes on their website at https://coldbrookcreek.org/sound-underground-audio-visual-content/.
To start, we find ourselves at a small pond at the local Aquinas Collage. Filled with what appear to be koi fish, this pond is actually a part of the Coldbrook Creek, which begins upstream from it’s source, Reeds Lake. From this pond, one follows as the stream becomes a narrow, winding path through the brush. More befitting the term “creek”, it’s banks are littered with branches and it’s channels filled with stones, smoothed by centuries of rushing water. We follow the stream to the location of the first sound-box, Wilcox Park. Nestled on a pillar of the park’s pavilion, one can hear the beginnings of this auditory journey interspersed with the sounds of children playing on the nearby. The box introduces the project and the creek, bringing us to the reason why the tour starts here. Nestled in the forested section of Wilcox Park, one can find a small trail which runs along the the Coldbrook Creek, giving an ample view of the first section of the creek that has been culverted underground.
After flowing through through these metal bars, described as prison-like by Mary Lewandowski (9), co-hair of the Coldbrook Creek Community with her husband, Peter Lewandowski. the stream is channeled through miles of underground pipes, built over decades under the feet of Grand Rapidians, only revealed by the sounds emitted from the various manhole covers, such as those recorded for the sound underground project. This includes the site of our next sound-box, the Fulton Street Market. During the warmer months of the year, this roofed corridor is filled with the hustle and bustle of the various shoppers going from stall to stall to stall, browsing wares from various local farmers and artisans, including yours truly last year.
At the bathrooms of this facility, one can find a small green soundbox that describes the creek’s relationship to agriculture. The Coldbrook Creek, while hidden underground, isn’t completely isolated from the surface. When walking on your local sidewalk or even wandering across a parking lot, you might come across a storm drain such as this,
On top of hosting spooky clowns, these omnipresent yet overlooked elements of civic engineering are places for water to be drained from the street. You see, paved surfaces are different from the soils that proceeded to them. They’re hard and stony, making them very difficult for water to penetrate through into the ground. As a result, streets and walkways would flood if the water was given nowhere else to go. Typically, these storm drains funnel water into underground culverts. For many of the streets, walkways, and paved lots along the subterranean route of the Coldbrook Creek, the culverts that storm drains empty into are the very same that house the creek. This is where another element of human involvement with this creek comes into the conversation; pollution (3).
A massive yet unintended consequence of this system is runoff pollution, which describes the process of water flowing over various surfaces and collecting various types of pollutants, such as oil, pesticides, and soil, and carrying them into various water sources. Another source of this type of pollution, which is the one that the sound underground project focuses on, is agricultural runoff. While the soil that composes an agricultural field is much more porous than a street, water can still run off from it and put pollutants into our water ways. According to the EPA, agricultural runoff is the leading cause of water quality impacts to rivers and streams. One effect that this runoff contributes to is an increase in nitrogen and phosphorous in the water, leading to a swell in the amount of algae that relies on these nutrients. While this may initially sound good, this can lead to a deoxygenation of the water, killing off any fish or other water breathing creatures. Pesticides can poison organisms and sediments can degrade freshwater habitats. These pollutants can also make the water worse for human use by degrading drinking water quality and ruining the recreation value of a body of water (4).
To make matters worse, drains such as the Coldbrook Creek are not truly protected by the clean water act, leaving protection in the hands of local governments. The shear volume of water going straight into the creek as opposed to absorbing into the ground can also present problems with erosion. During a conversation I had with Mary and Peter Lewandowski, they mentioned that during rainstorms water rushes through the culverts of the creek and emerges out at Highland Park, rapidly eroding it’s banks and leaving the trees roots exposed, which are left precariously clinging to the land.
Speaking of Highland Park, that’s the next stop on our tour. In this park, filled with playgrounds, sports fields, and bouldering walls, you can find a small, wooded nature trail. Here, I found what may be one of the most important sights yet on this tour; one of the only remaining sections of creek to see the sun. As proudly proclaimed by a wooden sign atop the large culvert where the creek first emerges from the depths of the earth. You can follow the creek as it flows along the surface, the sunlight glistening of the surface of the water and highlighting the occasional sections where the stream runs over a patch of stones. Combined with the vibrant surrounding vegetation and the sights and sounds of the various local critters, the creek feels almost joyous in it’s escape to the surface — unfortunately, this is a very short lived celebration. Almost as soon as it surfaces, the creek is diverted back underground.
Unlike our first two locations, no box was to be found here. In my conversation with Mary and Pete Lewandowski, Peter mentioned that the sound-boxes at Highland Park and Mary Waters Park were vandalized and stolen. Due to this and the renovations of Canal Park, Peter removed the sound-box there, leading to most of the Sound Underground project being removed from the public space. Ironically, one could view this article as a memorial for a memorial, a digital recollection of a record of the Coldbrook Creek. Fortunately, as mentioned before, all of the audio recordings contained in them are archived of the Coldbrook Creek Community website, meaning that all of the information can still be accessed for education and research. Among other topics, the sound-box speaks of the history of this exposed section of the creek in Highland Park. Back in the day, the park hosted a large lagoon to replace the multiple small ponds that were buried when the creek was culverted. People used to frequently swim in this lagoon until it was eventually closed and buried after accusations of indecent behavior and inappropriate swim attire. This, however, was far from the only site of merriment found on the banks of the Coldbrook. Other pools, such as the Creston Park pool, was filled with water from the creek. This pool was originally a sediment pond, constructed in 1875. With the purpose of helping remove silt from the creek water, this location helps highlight another important interaction humans have had with the Coldbrook Creek; drinking water.
From early on in white American settlement of Grand Rapids, the area was noted for it’s abundance of high quality water springs. While early on households would simply dig a well to obtain their water, the increasingly dense settlement eventually required the need of dedicated water services. This role was first filled by the Grand Rapids Hydrologic Company. Initially working with pipes made of hollowed logs joined by a trained shipwright; the company first sourced water from multiple streams, the Coldbrook Creek being among them, making the creek among the first major water sources for the city. Fire suppression was another important use for the water sourced from the creek. After a number of major fires, the city council voted to establish a city owned water supplier in 1870. The actual plan for the water supply system came from Peter Hogan, who proposed a series of iron pipes to supply water from the Coldbrook, Carrier, and Lamberton creeks (1).
Creston Park is also the subject of our next Sound Underground location, Mary Waters Park. A small urban park, the land is surrounded by neighborhoods, roads, and even a school. It is an environment most certainly urbanized, far from the sort of woodland adventure one might expect in following a creek and one most certainly alien to what the creek would have been found in many years ago, before it got buried under modern American urban planning.
To get to the park, I walked through Creston Plaza, an area of section 8 housing that can be found next to the park. Children were playing in the front yards and adults were enjoying the warm weather on their porches. Walking along the street here, one can tell that this a newer section of the city, with uniform houses bathed in sunlight unobstructed by trees. While the housing development as existed for decades, the current iteration of a neighbor hood was constructed in the mid 2010s (5). This was largely attributed to the frequent flooding of the neighborhood, the result of building the streets and homes over a pond.
In the late 1960’s, the city decided that Creston Park would be replaced by the section of federal housing now referred to as Creston Plaza. This move was heavily protested by the local community, albeit for less than virtuous reasons. According to Sound Underground, “In the late 1960s, as the men of the Creston Heights neighborhood were at work in factories, their wives became a squall of anger and fear. They were enraged that the underutilized park across Lafayette was to be demolished. Yet their thinly veiled cause was to keep public housing out of the neighborhood. Many crusaders readily admitted to this.” (9) While the objections against the park was absolutely laced with classism, such attitudes may have also doomed the park. In an attempt to address the concerns of local citizens, development planners proposed keeping much of the green space of the park and even retaining the pond by shrinking the footprint of the housing units, which would have ultimately only taken 7% of the park land. In response, federal officials rejected the compromise with the expression, “what is this, a resort?” This highlights another issue in this story, the systematic depriving of green space in American urban planning. According to a study conducted by the Trust for Public Lands, parks that serve low income populations were, on average, four time smaller than those serving high income populations (the average sizes being 25 acres and 101 acres, respectively.) Race also becomes a factor in the discussion, with parks in areas composed primarily of people of color being only 45 acres in size and often serving five times as many people as parks in majority white communities, which see an average park size of 87 acres (2).
While no portions of the Coldbrook Creek are visible from Mary Waters Park, a quick detour a few blocks away can reveal a related stream. Walking through a hilly, suburban landscape, one can find themselves at the head of an unmarked gravel trail next to a school bus depot. Unlike the other sections of exposed creek, which are either intentionally maintained for public green space or are protected through either sheer size or human value from being buried, this location is nestled between housing, streets, and maintenance sheds. It has the same mystique of a forested road median or a strip of trees between two properties, a bastion of the natural world existing in spite of, not because of, human interference. In this most unusual site of exploration, one can find a true treasure of an urban landscape; an exposed section of an otherwise culverted waterway.
This, however, is the Carrier Creek. While the Coldbrook has never formally flowed hear, the Carrier Creek ends by merging with it, leading to this being as much a part of the Coldbrook Creeks story as anything else. Here, I find it important to introduce the concept of a watershed. A watershed is a geographic area in which all water eventually flows into a common body, such as a lake or, in this case a stream. As with most natural phenomena, watersheds can be difficult to categorize. Much like a matryoska doll, a watershed can be the sum of many smaller watersheds while, itself, being merely a small part of a gigantic whole. With this, we must explore one of the wholes the Coldbrook Creek is a part of, the Grand River.
The site of interest here is the Coldwater Pumphouse, formerly the city’s oldest water pumping station and still currently home to the Grand Rapids Fire department. The department was out training some new cadets, adding some human life to the scene that would otherwise be found at the adjacent canal park, which was fenced off for renovations. If you look just right over the side of the railing, you can find the large hole in the cement wall separating the land from the water where the Coldbrook into the Grand River, much as the Carrier Creek does the Coldbrook Creek.
While this beautiful river filled with lily pads at first seems to represent a natural alternative to the now mostly artificial Coldbrook Creek, it too is a significantly altered environment. In years past, this would be the location of rushing rapids, some truly grand rapids, one could say. In an effort to better use the river economically and to manage flooding, the city installed a series of dams, which had the side effect of destroying it’s namesake rapids (7). While efforts to reinstate the rapids are ongoing, it is a bit out of scope for this expedition and can be visited later.
As for the sound box tour, this area discusses the creek’s history with the indigenous population of the area. According to the Sound Underground project, the people of the Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians, members of the Anishinaabe nation, have navigated, fished, and stewarded the waters of Coldbrook Creek for centuries. In 1821, the Treaty of Chicago ceded the land south of the Grand River, including the Coldbrook Creek watershed, to the US federal government. Later, in 1887, the Dawes act, also known as the General Allotment Act, took effect in an effort to farther erode the Ottawa way of life by taking the previously communally owned tribal lands and dividing them up for individual ownership. According to the National Archives, “… It was reasoned that if a person adopted “White” clothing and ways, and was responsible for their own farm, they would gradually drop their “Indian-ness” and be assimilated into White American culture. Then it would no longer be necessary for the government to oversee Indian welfare in the paternalistic ways it had previously done, including providing meager annuities, with American Indians treated as dependents.”(8)
The sound box then goes into the struggles the Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians have had with getting recognized by the federal government. Beyond the symbolic importance of having their existence institutionally recognized, federal recognition is vitally important for tribal members to receive many important rights and benefits, such as educational benefits, land rights, fishing rights, and hunting rights. Here we hear Ron Yob, chairman of the Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians, describe his efforts to get recognition through bringing various community members together to gather support and documentation. Notably, he describes how the US government takes issue with evidence for their residence in the area in the 1970s, a single decade of a millennia long history, one that includes the signing of multiple treaties, such as the aforementioned Treaty of Chicago. Unfortunately, as of the publishing of this article, they have yet to receive federal recognition.
In light of the story of the burying of the Coldbrook Creek, one might wonder if a stream can ever be unburied. Daylighting, the process of uncovering a previously culverted and buried stream, answers this question with an affirmative yes. In the report Daylighting Streams: Breathing Life into Urban Streams and Communities by American Rivers, three types of daylighting are recognized: natural, architectural, and cultural. Natural and architectural daylighting both involve physically returning the stream to open air conditions, with natural daylighting describing the process of restoring the stream to a natural state while architectural daylighting being the simple act of putting the open air stream into a constructed channel. Cultural daylighting, on the other hand, describes the act of bringing attention to a culverted stream through artistic or visual markers, such as the Sound Underground project. According to the report, stream daylighting brings with it many benefits. One of these is the restoring of wildlife habitat in developed areas (11). In my exploration of the Coldbrook Creek watershed, I can personally attest to the benefits of exposed creek areas from the various forms of wildlife I encountered, from the bucks I encountered at Carrier Creek to the perched osprey I chanced upon next to the Grand River. While much of humanity may treat it as an afterthought, these creatures value the Coldbrook Creek as an oasis in an extensively built over landscape.
Another benefit of stream daylighting is the fact that daylighted streams are better able to manage flooding then their culverted counterparts. The consequences of poor flood control as a result of this culverting can be seen with Creston Plaza’s frequent flooding issues. Finally, daylighting streams can greatly benefits the local economy through a combination of removing the costs of maintaining culverts and the increased water processing demands they bring and by bringing in increased property values and costumers for local businesses (11).
As for the prospects of daylighting the Coldbrook Creek, there are a few areas that hold the potential for daylighting. From my conversation with the Lewandowskis, one of the most promising candidates for potential daylighting is an extra few hundred feet of the already daylit section at Highland Park. Another location that is actually in talks of being daylit is the section of the stream where it exits into the Grand River by the water works pumphouse (6). While these two seem to be the only promising sites in the foreseeable future of daylighting the Coldbrook Creek, a report from 2015 did recommend daylighting significant portions of the creek if the railroad the runs along much of the path of the creek was to ever shut down (10).
While the Sound Underground project has provided a pretty comprehensive view into the Coldbrook Creek watershed, there are a few areas not covered by the soundbox tour that I feel are important to cover for a proper overview of the water shed. The first has to do with the previously mentioned topic of stream daylighting, being an exposed portion of the Coldbrook Creek that I learned through my conversation with the Lewandowskis; the St. Francis Statue Garden. Managed by the St Francis Statue Garden organization in cooperation with the Grand Rapids Dominican Sisters, who own the land the garden is on. (12)
Another location that is important to mention in this discussion of the Coldbrook Creek is Reeds Lake, one of the primary sources of the Coldbrook Creek. A hot spot for local birdwatchers, Reeds Lake helps to demonstrate the importance of open water sources for the health and wellness of local wildlife. It also serves as a reminder of the tragedies that befell the indigenous peoples here, being named after the man who first bought the land it resides on from the US government.
After all that has been talked about, one question remains; why does this matter? Why go on this grand adventure through the watershed of this small forgotten creek, buried and unseen for decades? Why set up soundboxes through out a city to promote knowledge of a stream? As mentioned a few time through the article, I had the chance to sit down with the Lewandowskis and discuss the Sound Underground project and their work in the Coldbrook Creek watershed. When I asked them what they would answer to the question of why the Coldbrook Creek is important. The answer I got could essentially be summarized in one word; interconnectedness. They said that they wanted the people within the watershed to be aware of the fact that they are connected by this stream. In the first soundbox, all the way back at Wilcox Park, Kate Levy arguably put it best with her observation of the term “watershed moment” — “… what is it that we mean when we say something is a “watershed moment”? A turning point, a key experience in our life? And yet, every inch of this land exists within a watershed. Perhaps, a better definition is when one notices, for the first time, something that has always been there.” (9)
During my interview with the Lewandowskis, they asked me what the angle of my story was. While, at that point, I was still formulating the exact layout of the article, farther research and writing has led me to the conclusion that any story of a watershed has to focus on that watershed moment; the moment when one first discovers what has always been there. A watershed, even one as modest as the Coldbrook Creek watershed, is too vast and complex to be about any one thing. The story of the Coldbrook Creek is a story of wildlife and of Native American tribes living on it’s banks. It’s also a story of a developing city using it for it’s populice and eventually tossing it aside, unaware of it’s benefits. It’s also a story of it’s befoulment with pollution and of the organizations fighting against it. It’s a story of locals setting up soundboxes to remember a forgotten stream and of a journalist telling it’s tale. While you might not live near the Coldbrook Creek, odds are you reside next to a similar story (for example, American Rivers found that 73% of streams in Beltimore, Maryland have been culverted underground). If you’re interested in helping out your local culverted creek, check in with your local environmental orgs and see what they need. Whatever the case, just remember; you’re part of a watershed, connected to countless others that you may never know, so take a moment of have a watershed moment of your own.
If you’re reading this, than you for staying until the end of the article! Special thanks to Peter and Mary Lewandowski for sitting with me for an interview. If you happen to find yourself in the area, the Coldbrook Creek Community hosts six water quality testing events per year, so feel free to stop by and lend a hand!
Image Attribution
- Sound box located at Canal Park/Coldbrook Pumphouse. https://coldbrookcreek.org/2024/10/16/sound-underground-sound-boxes/
- Panek. (2010). Rynsztok. Warsaw, Poland. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rynsztok.jpg
- All others were taken by me
Research Cited
.Baxter, A. (1891). The History of the City of Grand Rapids MI. Munsell & company.
2. Chapman, R., Foderaro, L., Hwang, L., Lee, B., Muqueeth, S., Sargent, J., & Shane, B. (2021, May 27). Parks and an equitable recovery — trust for public land. Trust for Public Land. https://www.tpl.org/parks-and-an-equitable-recovery-parkscore-report
3. Environmental Protection Agency. (2025a, May 2). Soak Up the Rain: What’s the Problem? EPA. https://www.epa.gov/soakuptherain/soak-rain-whats-problem
4. Environmental Protection Agency. (2025b, August 1). Nonpoint Source: Agriculture. EPA. https://www.epa.gov/nps/nonpoint-source-agriculture
5. Grand Rapids Housing Commision. (n.d.). Creston Plaza Apartments. Grand Rapids, MI.
6. Lewandowski, P., & Lewandowski, M. (2024, January 20). Coldbrook Creek: Rediscovering a Hidden Urban Stream. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ayTCGwmDcI
7. McNeil, T. (2025, January 6). Rapids Restoration Project finally gets the Green Light. 97.9 WGRD. https://wgrd.com/grand-rapids-rapids-restoration-approved/
8. National Archives and Records Administration. (2022, February 8). Dawes Act (1887). National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dawes-act
9. Sound Underground Audio/Visual content. Coldbrook Creek Community. (2025, May 21). https://coldbrookcreek.org/sound-underground-audio-visual-content/
10. Tetra Tech. (2015, October). Stream Daylighting Opportunities Assessment. Grand Rapids, MI.
11. Trice, A. (n.d.). Daylighting Streams: Breathing Life into Urban Streams and Communities. Washington, D.C.; American Rivers.
12. About Us. St Francis Sculpture. (n.d.). https://www.saintfrancissculpturegarden.org/about-1