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Maple Valley Township
The
Maple Valley Name
by Bertha (Mrs. Carl) Johnson
Valley Of The Maples. Where did Maple Valley get its
name? When the first settlers came in 1858, the area was
thickly forested with beautiful maple groves and
pine trees. Many romances blossomed in the sugar bushes, as
they were called, when the sap from the maple trees was gathered in
buckets, boiled down in huge
vats over a blazing fire and became maple syrup and sugar. It
became the place to go for young folks to watch the process.
Sap started flowing the first warm days of spring. It was
time for farmers to tap the trees and hang the buckets to catch the
sap. Maple Syrup and sugar became
the first crop of the year for many farmers who had settled in the
valley.
If you have historic photos, or information about
this township, please contact our on-line township historians;
Coral's Michael Baribeau, at: (email).
Trufant's Gerry Christiansen at: (email).
The current settlements in Maple Valley
township, are Coral
& Trufant.
Coral, in Maple Valley Township, was first settled by Rev. Charles Parker in
1861. He donated 80 acres to become the new
village. He became involved in lumbering. The lumber camp, called
Stumptown, was said to be first named Stumptown after the Stump and
Morris mill & was later platted as Coral. Logging flourished
and the Hart Oaks Company sawmill operated until 1880 when the pine
forests in the area were exhausted. Coral Enterprise newspaper began
publication here in 1875. The railroad came through in 1871 and as
potato farming increased potato warehouses were built along the tracks
in Coral and Trufant. http://www.montcalm.org/history0025.asp
Trufant, in Maple Valley Township, was named after Emory Trufant, who
acquired land, which was platted and recorded in 1871. He operated a
sawmill and soon after a steam sawmill and shingles and planing mills
were operating in the area. Farming was very important to many of the
settlers who were from Denmark. They cultivated the land planting their
crops among the wood stumps often pulling them out by hand and then by
machine. These stumps were later used to fence in their fields.
Potatoes were a very successful crop in the area and these were shipped
by rail to Greenville. http://www.montcalm.org/history0035.asp
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