Barry County, MI Real Estate, Homes For Sale, School & Area Information

Barry County is an outdoor playland. There are 162 lakes offering lots of great fishing and watersports. The largest is Gun Lake with 2,680 acres, a state park and two boat launches for your convenience. At the Yankee Springs Recreation Area you can use a beach wheelchair for access to the sand and water of Gun Lake. If you like to walk the trails you will find miles of hiking, bicycling, and horse trails through out the county. Most notably is the North County Trail which traverses both the lower and upper Michigan. Hastings is host to the Barry-Roubaix. Billed as the largest road/off road cycling race, bicyclist can tackle routes from 22 miles to 100 miles! For those that like to camp check out the Yankee Springs Recreation Area with both rustic and modern campgrounds.

Yankee Springs Recreation Area is a park that covers over 5,200 acres. There are nine lakes within the park area. Chief Noonday Lake, Deep Lake, Duck, Gun Lake, Hall Lake, Long Lake, Mac Donald Lake, Payne Lake and William Lake. All of these lakes have fishing.

Yankee Springs Recreation Area has year round outdoor activities. The park includes picnic shelters, playgrounds, two public beaches and two fishing piers. There are thirty miles of hiking trails, 12 miles of mountain bike trails, and nine miles of horseback trails to enjoy in the spring and summer. Fishing, hunting, wildlife watching and swimming are other activities available within the recreation area. There are 10 acres of ski trails, snowmobiling, snowshoeing and ice fishing in the winter months. The recreation area includes bogs, marshes, lakes and streams.

This area was formerly hunting grounds for Algonquin Indians. But in 1835 that changed. Yankee Bill Lewis helped it to become a popular stagecoach stop for those travelling from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids by providing a hotel in that spot.