Today the lodge that once belonged to Jim is no more in Curwood hands. In the fall of 1939 Mrs. Curwood sold it to a buyer who wanted it very much. Fortunately enough it was sold to a great lover of James Oliver Curwood stories as well as a great admirer of Jim himself—a man who promised to keep it as it always was.
Today in Owosso, at 508 Williams Street, stands the home of Mr. and Mrs. James Oliver Curwood, where Mrs. Curwood still resides. The house is a very large, majestically built domicile standing on the very spot on which the former tribes of the Chippawayan Indians camped. Jim chose this site for that reason alone. The home could more readily be called a mansion, it is so large and beautiful, with spacious gardens surrounding it. It is just a few hundred yards from Curwood Castle.
Jim Curwood was without much doubt the greatest and foremost naturalist of his time. He loved nature so sincerely and lived in such intimate communion with it, that, as he once put it so naively:
“I have become a bit estranged from a large part of the rest of humanity.”
Any and all times are good times to seek nature in all of her wondrous glory, and that was precisely what he believed.
Jim Curwood believed that even a twig from off a tree, or a blade of grass have souls. Souls that are every bit as important as the vital organs and souls of human beings.
James Oliver Curwood’s God was nature. The same nature that he so wonderfully preaches about in all his writings. He vividly tells of nature, the reasons, the idea of nature and just why we must protect and conserve it. Jim’s books and writings go straight to the hearts of his readers for he was a common man even when his fame had been assured. His readers knew that. Everyone knew him as Jim ... just Jim.
One of his common hobbies was raising radishes and onions. Jim once said concerning these two vegetables that he delighted in raising:
“I can beat anyone in Shiawassee county raising onions. I mean green onions, the kind you eat with bread and butter.”
Even about his own home somewhere in the back Jim always had an onion patch along with some fine and assorted radishes. He loved to work in the rich, black earth.