Abbot Park, photo by jstealth03.

Abbot Road Park is one of the City of East Lansing’s 24 neighborhood parks. It’s located north of Lake Lansing Road and designated as a hiking and cross-country ski trails natural area with access to the Northern Tier Trail.

The city can’t seem to settle on a name for the park. Their web page calls it “Abbot Park” but the road is “Abbott Rd”. The city’s park & facilities map (pdf) lists it as “Abbot Road Park” so that’s probably correct. However, there’s the matter of Abbot Hall, about which Kevin Forsyth’s fabulous History of East Lansing says:

The hall was named for Theophilus Capen Abbot (1826-1892). Dr. Abbot joined M.A.C. as Professor of English from 1858 to 1866. He then became acting Secretary of the Board of Agriculture, a position he effectively held until 1871. Concurrently — and most importantly — he was third President of the College from 1862 until 1884. During his long and distinguished tenure, he guided the growth of the school through difficult times, and “showed an eye single to the grand object for which the College was established. Nothing could swerve him from a course which should ever keep in view the aid and promotion of agriculture.”

In any case, I’ve added a marker for Abbott Road Park to our Absolute Michigan map of Michigan and requested some sort of clarification from Mr. Forsyth – if you have anything to add to my confusion or the discussion, please post it in the comments!