Raven Hill celebrates 30 years of science, history and art
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EAST JORDAN — Tucked away in the woods on 175 acres there's an education center celebrating three decades of providing hands-on learning for all ages by connecting science, history and the arts.
Raven Hill Discovery Center — which opened in 1992 and has since welcomed over an estimated 400,000 guests — is celebrating its 30 year anniversary this year.
"This all started because I have been teaching since the mid-60s. I love teaching but I could see all of the testing that was starting to happen and, when you do that, kids aren't necessarily learning," said Raven Hill Discovery Center's founder and CEO Cheri Leach.
"You also had science, language arts, math and social studies but they never really interacted and our whole mission is to connect science with history and art and so we really just jumped off the diving board into something that provided some more informal learning but that really allowed people to connect all of this information," she said.
Raven Hill is the product of Cheri and Tim Leach's dream and was imagined as a place that would provide hands-on experiences through different programming, exhibits and facilities.
Since its opening, the center has expanded across its property with exhibits and trails that show the history of life from the formation of the solar system up through modern times. The grounds now boast the main building with its many different exhibit rooms, an evolving technology building that opened in 2015, a fiber studio, energy house, music garden, print shop, connection trails, boardwalk and much more.
"It has really been an interesting journey," said Leach.
"Everything has kind of morphed into what it was now and changed depending on what we needed or what's happened over time," she said.
Leach continued while chuckling in saying that "... Raven Hill does have a master plan on freezer paper with little squares that are all labeled."
She also explained that, over time, Raven Hill's exhibits and walking trails formed a sort of capital "T." One line of the "T" has guests walking from the beginning of time up through the era of the modern man with the other showing the ancient world and technological advances also up through today with a print shop, its evolving technology building and school house.
Looking back over the last 30 years, Leach has been humbled by returning students. She has numerous stories of guests that have come back years later to show and give their significant others and children the same experiences they had at the center as a kid.
"I had a young man once who was probably in his early 30s who had his girlfriend with him from England. He brought her to show her what he had experienced growing up," she said.
"He was telling her about where things used to be and shared some stories of his time there. It's just so cool that I have some kids who have come back after all these years and they remember things like that so vividly."
Leach has also enjoyed returning students who have grown up and brought in an old picture they had taken with Raven Hill's snake around their neck. A lot of them come wanting an updated picture to relive their past experience at the center.
"There's countless stories of people coming back and it's so great they remember so much and have such a connection to the center," said Leach.
In addition to everything the center is currently working on, Leach really wants to finish one last major project before retiring.
Raven Hill sits back in the woods a little bit on top of a steep hill. In 2017, the center acquired the land running all the way to the bottom of the hill with dreams of building another center towards the bottom to use in the winter.
The hope is that it can mimic the main building and have many of the same offerings through the colder months and turn into a rental unit or staff housing in the summer.
"This way no one would have to come up the hill in the middle of winter and we could continue most of our programming year round," said Leach.
"That is my big goal to get done before I retire."
Raven Hill Discovery Center is open seven days a week from Memorial Day to Labor Day and weekends the rest of the year. The center is also always open by appointment.
More information about the center, its programming, exhibits and many other offerings can be found online at www.miravenhill.org or by calling (231) 536-3369.
Contact reporter Sean Miller at smiller@petoskeynews.com. Follow him on Twitter, @seanmillerpnr, and Instagram, @sean_everest.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Raven Hill celebrates 30 years of science, history and art
