In 1919, Detroit Commissioner of Parks and Playgrounds E. G. Heckel took Mayor James Couzens on a tour of a field on the city’s far west side. While the area was nothing but farmland, Heckel was envisioning the site as Detroit’s largest park.
Not only would the massive park have places where Detroiters could hike and bike, the plan also included swimming pools, a golf course and more.
Over the next five years, the city purchased 12 large farms for a total cost of $1.25 million to assemble the park. In the summer of 1925, Rouge Park opened to the public, attracting thousands of visitors who wanted to experience the city’s latest attraction.
Despite years of declining foot traffic, disinvestment and attempts from city officials to sell the recreational space, Rouge Park is still standing 100 years later. The nonprofit Friends of Rouge Park is celebrating the park’s centennial with a three-day festival Friday-Sunday. The free event will include a carnival, musical performances and a community resource fair.
Friday’s festivities includes a Jazz in the Park series from 5-8 p.m. featuring Detroit R&B singer AnJelic and pianist Brendon Davis with vocalist Dorian Dillard II. There will also be a celebration reception happening 5-8 p.m. at Joy Road and Spinoza Drive, with proceeds going toward the nonprofit’s mission of preserving the park’s history, enhancing recreational spaces, and protecting the wildlife and ecosystems that live in Rouge Park. Tickets for the reception are $108 on Eventbrite.
The rest of the weekend includes performances by local acts like Jessica Ivey, Gmac Cash, Jit Masters, DJ Royal and Purple Reign. (Full lineup here.) Aside from music, the festival will also highlight other organizations that offer activities in Rouge Park, said Lindsay Pielack, executive director of Friends of Rouge Park.
“Our organization has a ton of connections with the community and so, we’ll have a resource fair with about 30 vendors each day,” she said. “The Buffalo Soldiers (Heritage Association) will be giving a talk, Strathmoor Model Club, which has been in the park since the ’50s, they do this model airplane type of flying. Detroit Outdoors, which does a lot of work to get kids out in nature, will be doing some activities. It’s really a group effort to throw a huge party that is fun for everyone, and to really highlight what is so special about this park.”
Pielack is helping to usher in a new chapter for Friends of Rouge Park, as the organization transitions from being solely volunteer-based to having a full-time staff. She became the nonprofit’s first executive director in January.
“It’s definitely been a whirlwind six months for sure, but it’s a very exciting time,” Pielack told BridgeDetroit. “The park is almost 1,200 acres, and every day I feel like I’m learning something new about all the incredible natural features and partners in the park. I mean, it’s just incredible how much is going on in the park.”
A park full of Detroit history
Coming in at 1,184 acres, Rouge Park is the largest urban park in Detroit and in Michigan. It’s larger than Belle Isle, which is 982 acres, and even Central Park in New York at 843 acres.
The park offers a host of activities, such as Brennan Pool, the Scout Hollow Campground, an urban farm operated by the Detroit Black Food Sovereignty Network, as well as the Buffalo Soldiers group and its living museum, which offers horse rides and teaches the community the history of the all-Black U.S. Army unit.
In addition, the Detroit Pistons are developing a $20 million recreation center inside the park.
The original visionaries of the Rouge Park had even bigger plans for the space than how it exists today, said Paul Stark, a trustee for Friends of Rouge Park who’s been studying the history of the park.
The original plan for the park was to have a grand entrance at Joy Road and Trinity Street and for the Joy and Spinoza area to be a center of activity called The Mall, with an amphitheater, glass conservatory and casino similar to those on Belle Isle. However, the Great Depression put those plans on hold and the projects were never completed, Stark wrote in his blog.
Four years after the park opened, the roads and the first park amenities were built, including the Rouge Park Golf Course, the Brennan swimming pools, tennis courts, toboggan slides, a skating rink and recreation center. About 50,000 people visited the park during Memorial Day weekend in 1929 and another 2,000 came out to the dedication ceremony for Brennan Pool, according to the Detroit Free Press. The Tudor Revival facility originally had three Olympic-sized pools and became the site of the Olympic Trials in 1948, 1956 and 1960, Stark said.
A popular event at the park every summer for decades was the Soap Box Derby. The first event was held in July 1935 and was sponsored by The Detroit News and Detroit Chevrolet Dealers. The derby drew a crowd of 3,000 and 5,000 respectively for the first two days of races and 10,000 for the finals, according to Stark’s blog. The winner of the race then advanced to the national race in Akron, Ohio.
Only boys ages 9 to 15 years old could participate in the races, with girls not allowed to compete until 1971. The derby became a Rouge Park tradition until the event moved to Dorais Playground on the east side in 1956. The derby continued on until the early 1980s.
The Detroit News also had a hiking club at Rouge Park, Stark said. For the first hike in 1936, 1,600 people showed up. Hikers often walked on the Ma’iingan Wildwood Trail, which was developed by the Daughters of the American Revolution, including Indigenous member Etta S. Wilson.
“Etta S. Wilson was a journalist who started two different organizations, one in Grand Rapids, one in Detroit, to advocate for women journalists because at the time, women were often relegated to the society pages or the home pages,” Stark said. “She was demanding that women have full rights to cover every story. And she also worked for the Audubon Society and spent much of her time at Rouge Park reporting on the birds there.”
Stark said Rouge Park started to decline in the 1960s and 1970s as the population in Detroit began to drop. As residents began heading to the suburbs, it was getting harder for the city’s Parks and Recreation department to maintain all of its parks, he said. And fewer people were going to the park. When Stark moved to Detroit in 1987, the park was never crowded, he said.
“My first impression was, ‘Wow, what a huge, beautiful park. Why is it so empty, and why does no one seem to go there?” he said.
Also in the late 1980s, the city was considering a proposal to convert part of the park into a senior citizen building and a bowling alley, but the idea was ultimately rejected, reported the Detroit Free Press. Then in the 2000s, mayors Kwame Kilpatrick and Dave Bing wanted to either sell Rouge Park to condo developers or close parts of the park, Stark said.
However, since Friends of Rouge Park formed in 2002, the group has been working to preserve the park and raise awareness about the many available activities.
“We’ve been slowly growing the organization and getting support, working with state legislators, city council, the mayor,” Stark said. “Now we’ve got 11 new soccer fields open, we attracted the Pistons to put in new basketball courts and tennis courts. We’ve got five new picnic shelters, a new walking path in the south end of the park. What’s really amazing about the park is just how the park came to be and how lucky we are to still have this park.”
The opportunities for recreation are limitless, Pielack said, and she’s looking forward to Rouge Park serving the community for another 100 years.
“My hope is that in 100 years, everyone has their own history of how Rouge Park was part of their childhood or their life in a significant way through the generations,” she said.