The Day Trip: Gators and More in Athens, Michigan

South Bend is barely an hour from unexpected wildlife, small town charm, and a 15-foot ice cream cone

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED JULY 23, 2025

Athens High School had a golden opportunity to choose a really great mascot. They could have been The Olympians. Or The Minotaurs. Or The Stoics.

But they aren't. They're The Indians.

Of course, this is Athens, Michigan; and it's the home to maybe a few Stoics, no Olympians, and probably no Minotaurs either. But Native Americans? Yes, they lived here for a very, very long time.

Anyway, the historians of Athens, Michigan will tell you that their town is not named after the Greek capital. Their town was founded in the 1830s when settlers from Athens, New York made the trip out west with the hope of replicating their home. The Athens in New York was a small town, and it still is.

So is the Athens in Michigan. It's got a post office, a gas station, a cozy little diner, a dollar store, and an adorable park where children frolic in the mud bottom creek to keep cool in the summer. It's got a population of just under a thousand.

Of course, it'd be a lot more if you counted the gators.

Surprisingly, it's completely legal to keep an alligator as a pet in the state of Michigan. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the people who choose to keep an alligator as a pet in Michigan later repent of their decision. That means that a surprising number of alligators are abandoned in the Wolverine State each year. Without anywhere else to go, a lot of them end up at the Critchlow Alligator Sanctuary in Athens, Michigan.

A lot of the gators have sad stories. One captured during a drug raid. Another living in a bathtub in a basement for twenty years. One found along a Michigan highway. One discovered sitting atop a massive stash of cocaine.

The police aren't usually trained to deal with gators, and it's not exactly a task for the local humane society either. That means that if the gators can't be rehomed to Critchlow, they'll almost certainly be destroyed. Some have been. But plenty more have wound up in Athens — more than 200 of them.

David Critchlow never set out to own an alligator sanctuary. He was just a lover of animals, especially reptiles and lizards. But when someone asked him to watch their pet alligator for a weekend — and then never returned — that was the beginning of something that was going to continue for a very long time.

The Sanctuary in Athens opened in 2008 with 24 gators, which was a welcome change for everyone involved. Before the Sanctuary, those two dozen alligators had been living in Critchlow's house. It's safe to assume that his house couldn't have accommodated the 200 that call the Sanctuary their home now.

For those 200, Critchlow has been a literal lifesaver. There's not another Alligator Sanctuary within 500 miles.

Critchlow is mostly retired now, but his children have taken over — and grown — the operation. They're the ones rescuing, helping, and even training the alligators. And yes, gators are trainable. It's a remarkable thing to watch a man in an enclosure barking orders at an alligator named Godzilla and swatting the creature playfully on the nose if he doesn't listen the first time, even if you do observe the scene with bated breath.

Besides that, there are plenty of opportunities to touch, feed, or even hold live gators.

And then, when you leave, you'll probably notice the brochure advertising that the World's Tallest Ice Cream Cone is just to the north. And it's not like you're not going to go there.

 

 

Carved from a dead tree and repainted each year, the World's Tallest Ice Cream Cone sits outside Station 66, a retro diner with locally grown produce, elevated diner fare, and dynamite ice cream. As for the carved tree out in the yard, it's a big ice cream cone to be sure, but much like the Mentone Egg, it's not so big that it feels like it would be terribly difficult to build a bigger one and claim the title for yourself.

But so far, no one has.

And until they do, that means there's at least one more reason for a road trip to Athens. It might not be the Parthenon, but gators, tortoises, and ice cream aren't a bad consolation prize, either.

Aaron Helman is an author, historian and adventurer from South Bend. You may have seen him around South Bend drinking coffee. Learn more about his work or check out his books at aaronhelman.com.