Belle Isle State Park (Michigan)

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Belle Isle is a 3.9 km ² island in the Detroit River is managed as a municipal park of the Detroit Department of Parks and Recreation and connected by the MacArthur Bridge with the rest of the city. On it is the Detroit Yacht Club, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, a post of the Coast Guard, a municipal golf course and Zoo. On the shore, the beach is only ( 800m long) in the city of Detroit.

The island was landscaped in the 1880s by Frederick Law Olmsted. The Belle Isle Casino from 1908 will be used for public events. A special attraction is America's oldest aquarium ( closed in 2005) and a beautiful botanical garden. Casino and Aquarium was designed by the Detroit architect Albert Kahn.

For more than 50 years, the islands were home to a herd of fallow deer of European. 2004, the last 300 animals were captured and brought to the zoo grounds. Some will remain there when the zoo reopened.

The park has suffered from the economic difficulties of the city of Detroit. The zoo was closed in 2002, due to open but again. The Belle Isle Aquarium, opened in 1904, was closed for financial reasons on 3 April 2005. On 2 August 2005, there were, however, a referendum that started with 88 % in favor of reopening.

On the island, a motorsport race named Raceway at Belle Isle from 1992 to 2001 was established. Since 2007, the race of the IndyCar Series will be held there again.