Ottawa County, Michigan created in 1837, is a landscape shaped by water both by Lake Michigan, and the Grand River. Along the lakeshore vast sand dunes front the water with forests and swamps in the interior, with the ancient branch of the Grand River featuring swamps. As the survey maps shows, it is a landscape that had to be fully transformed before European-style agriculture could be implemented.

From the 1850s to the 1880s, large-scale logging took place and removed the thick forests. By the 1890s, railroads and interurbans crossed the landscape that artists such as German-born, Grand Rapids-based Mathias Alten would depict in a range of media.