Memorial Eyed at Bay City State Park for Longtime District Supervisor
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William F. Richter and his daughter (Joan) at her graduation from Handy High in 1952.
William F. "Bill" Richter was a legend in state park circles.
Now his daughter, Joan Behrmann of Bay City, and other relatives want to memorialize the man at the Bay City State Recreation Area where he was "the boss" for 33 years.
Mr. Richter, besides serving as manager of Bay City State Park, was district supervisor for 10 parks in northeast Michigan.
The Boston Sun-Globe on Sept. 25, 1932 described Mr. Richter as "mayor, police chief, fire chief, municipal judge and head of public works of a tented city of 2,000 persons." Every week he would hold court to iron out disputes between the campers.
He also developed state parks at East Tawas, Harrisville, Hartwick Pines at Grayling and Sleeper State Park, Caseville.
Besides that, Mr. Richter directed two CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps where the unemployed were put to work making public improvements.
In the first few years, Bay City State Park attracted only about 25,000 visitors per season, he recalled in an interview.
In the 1930s and into the 1940s, the slow economy led folks from big cities like Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati and other metropolises to head out on the open road to escape the heat of the cities. Many -- up to 1.5 million some seasons -- camped at Bay City state park.
The record year of 1932 brought 1,630,000 visitors to the Bay City State Park and national media attention to the park manager.
Threatened with loss of his job during a political shakeup in the 1930s, Richter survived when Democrats and Republicans joined forces to petition the state to keep him in his supervisor's post.
Mr. Richter was born in 1890 and grew up with the park area, tending his father's cattle that ran free on the bayfront land that later became Bay City State Park.
He recalled to a Bay City Times reporter in the early 1960s that as a boy he often thought the swampy, sandy area would make a good park.
He dropped out of school at age 14, worked in the local coal mines, was a bartender and ran a restaurant. Classified 4-F during World War I, he worked on the railroads, sold cigars in a downtown store and pumped gas. Moving up to sales manager of six gasoline stations, when business dropped off in 1927 he took a leave of absence and gravitated to his old stomping grounds along the bayshore that was being made into a park by the state of Michigan.
In 1930, Mr. Richter was named district supervisor for parks in northeastern Lower Michigan. His duties included running a walleye hatchery located near one of the current pavilions at the Bay City park.
In 1932 he was quoted in a newspaper as saying "there is not another state institution that is more appreciated by as large a mass of people as Michigan's parks."
He and his family lived in a house on the campgrounds that is still used as an office by the state Department of Natural Resources.
In 1948, the local newspaper reported a big part of getting the park open in the spring was cleanup of the beach, noting that 50 truckloads of debris was hauled away.
The 170 acres that Mr. Richter started with has grown to about 2,800 acres, much of it the Tobico Marsh area that was the gift of a fishing club. Offshore swimming rafts, 500 picnic tables and 200 large waste containers were put back from storage each season.
Richter tried bulldozing the beach to clean it, but efforts failed and he said the machines ruined the shore. Today the Friends of Bay City State Recreation Area and the Save Our Shoreline (SOS) preservation group headed by county commissioners Kim Coonan and Ernie Krygier are hard at work each year on keeping the beach clean, the same effort Mr. Richter addressed 60 years ago.
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jamag608 Says:
On July 29, 2009
at 12:12 AM
I now live in Sanford, Florida.
But as a kid growing up in the 1930s and 40s, I knew the State Park and Mr. Richter very well. He was strict concerning "HIS" park but he was also a gentleman. Any youngsters getting out of order would get a good tongue lashing and the threat of being banned from the park. To a teenager that was a fate worse than death. And notice that I referred to him as "Mr.Richter". He was known by that name by any one entering the park. |
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