Mr. John N. Magee
Punter's Party
Jack and Ralph Boyd
In 1903, John N. Magee, of Elmore, Ohio acquired 1,000 acres of marshland belonging to the Crane Creek Shooting Club and 1,700 acres from the Cleveland Hunting Club. Today, this comprises part of the Magee Marsh Wildlife Area and the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge. Mr. Magee's original intent was to dike off and drain the marsh utilizing it's fertile soil for agricultural purposes. However, after several years of high lake levels, farming this area became impossible. After realizing the habitat was ideal for waterfowl and furbearers, he allowed it to revert back to marshland for muskrat trapping and waterfowl hunting.
During the 1920's through 1940, Magee Marsh was leased to an exclusive hunting group of ten men from Detroit for duck hunting. After Mr. Magee's death in 1925, his two daughters, Julia and Ruth continued to supervise the 2,700 acres of marsh.
In 1940, the Magee family sold their beloved marshland to a private hunting club known as the Magee Marsh Hunt Club. Damage to dikes and channels caused by continued high lake levels made maintenance very costly for the hunting club and 1,821 acres was purchased by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Today, Magee Marsh is one of the few remaining wetland complexes on the Lake Erie shoreline.