Happy Earth Day! I'm gonna do a little dive into our Huron-Clinton Metropark system. It's one of the most overlooked and successful conservation efforts in our area, one of our better examples of regionalism, and another example of environmental racism re: park access

Detroit's rapid development in the early 20th century ate up the city's greenspace quickly and left Detroiters with very few parks. The ones that existed were regularly overcrowded, and as the region sprawled outward, the wilderness and lakes people escaped to became suburbia.

The Huron and Clinton rivers had a lot of dams and mills through the late 19th century. Industry started moving toward railways and highways, leaving behind small towns that sat abandoned along the banks of the rivers

South of Ypsi, the Huron was in pretty bad shape, there were also several dams in the works. Same went for the Clinton which endured Pontiac's heavy industrial use and was heavily polluted by concrete plants and other dumping

At a 1937 conference in Ann Arbor about the river, the Huron-Clinton Parkway Committee was formed. The group's aim was to form a Metropolitan authority empowered to build and construct parks, parkways, and connecting roads across the 5 counties. It would go on the ballot in 1940

The committee deeply understood how important promoting the campaign was, they hired a campaign manager and sent committees to other cities to experience their parks and write about how shitty Detroit's were in comparison. Here are some ads too

The attitudes of the counties leading up to voting you ask? The Wayne County take is where things get racist

Sharing the ballot with FDR in November 1940, the HCMA project was approved by voters by a 2:1 margin. It was decided not to start intense development until after the war, but to move the planning process forward to be ready when the time came

The first park planned was the failed Belleville Lake Park that would've occupied the northern shore of the lake. It was scrapped bc the property became too expensive. Now there are a ton of ugly houses and apartments there. (I'm not saying we should bring urban renewal back but-

It should be noted the 1943 riots happened around the time these developments were going on. The 2 day riot was sparked by racist fights at Belle Isle, one of the few places Black people and whites mixed. It impacted perceptions of BI and plans for future parks. More on this l8r

In 1944, the authority finally made its first purchase: 385 acres on Lake St. Clair in Macomb County. The site would be raised 4 feet by dredging sand from the lake and become St. Clair Metropolitan Beach. The authority continued acquiring more land and planning the parks

The first park the authority successfully opened in 1947 was Kensington Metropark 33 miles from Downtown at the intersection of Grand River Ave. and the Huron River. A dam was constructed that enlarged the lake to its size today. The park was expanded again in the mid 50s

This opening was followed in 1950 by the much smaller Marshbank park, which was a gift and ultimately taken out of the HCMA system in 1987

The next major opening would be Lake St. Clair Metropark in 1951, a wild success that became known as Metrobeach. It was the largest developed freshwater beach of its kind in the U.S. when it opened and was heavily modeled after Jones Beach in NY (more on Robert Moses l8r)

In 1952, Dexter-Huron Metropark out in Ann Arbor was brought into the system, formerly owned by Ford

1953 brought the Lower Huron Valley into the system

Hudson Mills Metropark was added in 1957

Delhi Metropark also joined the system in 1957

Stony Creek was acquired in 1956, the site was imagined as a full sized metropark rivaling Kensington and the lake was created by building a dam. It opened in 1964

By this point, the authority boasted 8 parks, spanning 10,300 acres. A little under 30 years since the meeting in A2, and thousands of acres of park were developed by the authority, but the question of how Detroit would be linked into the system still wasn't answered.

Taxpayers in Detroit footed the heaviest bill in the early development of metroparks on the fringes of the region and while the original idea of the HCMA was to incorporate the city and Belle Isle into the plan, that never happened.

An early 1970s plan would've increased the authority's funding by another 1/4 mill to redevelop Belle Isle, bringing it into the Metropark system. City voters approved, but the millage needed was rejected 2 years later by suburban voters.

Delays for this continued, and by the time Coleman Young took office, people in the city were v skeptical of giving HCMA control of the park. CAY suggested the HCMA pay Detroit its revenue share back to help bring money into the park, but this never happened.

The original vision of linking the parks with a parkway was somewhat tabled under the influence of infamous racist planner Robert Moses. He consulted HCMA to ditch the parkway (which would have connected them perfectly to Detroit's Aves) and instead focus on freeway connections

This means the Metropark system we know and love today was (intentionally!) never properly connected to the central city that played a crucial role in funding its development. Detroit tax dollars went to far flung parks while ours suffered and the suburbs refused to help.

So if you have the privilege of driving, enjoy our Metroparks! But think about how much better and more connected they could be if it we didn't cede the vision to regional divisions.

S/o to this guys dissertation https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/111624

I reviewed all of HCMA's biennial reports and didn't see a Black family photographed in them until like the 70s