At only 0.62 acre, Bertha’s Haven Sanctuary is a very small piece of the dune and swale forest within the Southern Lake Huron Coastal Park, but an important connection between the 11.5-acre TLC Hamzavi-Peltier Sanctuary to the south, and access to the 42.1-acre TLC Bidwell Sanctuary to the north.

The Michigan Nature Association donated this small preserve to the TLC in September of 2019. As the TLC owns the adjacent Hamzavi-Peltier Sanctuary, it was determined that the TLC is better able to provide stewardship.

Michigan Nature Association co-founder, Bertha Daubendiek, established this preserve back in 1972 as a place to transplant native wildflowers from the adjacent Detroit Water Board property before the Lake Huron water intake facility was constructed. About twenty years later, Bertha and future TLC Executive Director Bill Collins visited the little preserve when Bill was doing volunteer field work for MNA. Then 76, Bertha Daubendiek walked with two canes about 600 feet through thick brush just to show Bill the preserve. Upon donation from the MNA, the TLC renamed the preserve in honor of Bertha Daubendiek, borrowing part of an even older name. In a public naming ceremony in nearby Burtchville in October of 2020, the Blue Water Indigenous Alliance further honored Bertha by giving the sanctuary an indigenous name – “Mindimooyenh”, meaning “An Elder Woman of Great Respect” in the Annishinaabemowin language.