[Photo, c. 1930, Wayne State University, courtesy Walter P Reuther Library

Will Scripps established Wildwood Farm with the help of Scots cattleman Sidney Smith, who was his estate superintendent for over thirty years.   The farm housed seven managers and employed numerous workers from the Orion area.  Scripps was known to be fair-minded and concerned with worker well-being.  Farm families had their own beach and picnic area on Voorheis Lake, and their children played with the Scripps children.  Even during the lean years of the Depression, Wildwood farm workers felt very little of the devastating economic impact experienced by those just a few miles away. 

Scripps’ and Smiths deaths occurred within a few months of each other in 1952.  The animals and equipment were sold at auction, and the farm buildings became part of Howard Keating’s Keatington Antique Village for many years before becoming Canterbury Village.

William E. Scripps founded the true heart of the estate, Wildwood Farm, in 1916. Though he described the farm as his “hobby,” he took it very seriously; he implemented state-of- the- art agricultural practices in land reclamation and stock breeding. By the late 1920s, the farm was world famous.

Wildwood Farm grew in acreage and especially in reputation as one of the foremost stockbreeding enterprises in the world. In particular, Scripps helped improve the worldwide genetic lines of Aberdeen (Black) Angus beef cattle by selective breeding of a disease resistant steer.  He also raised purebred milk cows, swine, sheep, and poultry, and had a modern dairy operation.  To make his farm enterprise as efficient as possible, he relocated earlier pioneer barns to a centrally located site on Joslyn Road, adding other farm buildings, manager housing, and a school for the farm’s children.  

Today, the original farm buildings are incorporated into the unique shopping complex known as Canterbury Village.  Visitors there can see the intact manager cottages, an original Hadrill family farmhouse, and the remains of several barns—including the large dairy barn—now converted to shops. Much of the farm’s land and lakes are now parks, and continue to provide sanctuary for local wildlife—Orion Township’s Civic Center Park, Oakland County’s Orion Oaks Park, and Bald Mountain State Recreation Area.

Wildwood Farm, c. 1990 (Photo, "Scripps-Wildwood Farm Historic District,"
Michigan State Historic Preservation Office, Department of History, Arts, and Librariess.)