Bloomer Park

In 1922, Howard Bradley Bloomer, chairman of the board of the Dodge Motor Car Company, donated land for four state parks to the state of Michigan. Bloomer had earlier convinced Dodge's board of directors to donate land for eleven parks to be named in honor of the late John and Horace Dodge, and his new donation of four additional parks was meant to augment to the Dodge gift. Bloomer was an ardent conservationist and was eager to see the development of Michigan's fledgling state park system.

Forty-seven acres on the Clinton River in Avon Township were given to the state to create Bloomer State Park No. 2. The other three Bloomer State Parks were located on Middle Straits Lake in West Bloomfield, on Grass Lake in White Lake Township, and near Ortonville.

The Bloomer Park land includes some remnants of the Clinton-Kalamazoo Canal, which was begun at Mount Clemens in 1838 in an attempt to traverse the Lower Peninsula of Michigan with an engineered waterway. Approximately sixteen miles of canal were completed before the project was abandoned near Rochester in 1843. Although long ago overgrown, some traces of the canal can still be identified in the park.

Bloomer State Park No. 2 was open to visitors by 1924, and became a popular location for picnics and outings by families, church groups, and organizations of all kinds. During the Great Depression, the park's infrastructure was built out by workers from the local Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp. The CCC built a parking lot, picnic shelter, and restrooms, and engineered miles of paths and trails.

Two of Bloomer's iconic structures, the stone picnic shelter and the adjacent stairway to the riverbank, were started by CCC crews, but construction was interrupted when the CCC program was ended in 1942 because of World War II. The Michigan Department of Conservation allocated funds to complete the work on the stone shelter in 1946. The Rochester Era reported: “Building materials which have lain at the site since CCC workers laid down their tools before the war are being worked again, and Bloomer No. 2 state park will have a new combination shelter, toilet and concession building ready for next season. The structure, of split fieldstone and logs, was nearly one-quarter complete when work stopped. The crew now finishing it will also build several hundred feet of sidewalks and steps leading down the steep banks of the Clinton River.”

Also in 1946, Bloomer State Park No. 2 became part of the larger Rochester-Utica Recreation Area, when the state organized several such areas in southeastern Lower Michigan. Bloomer was part of the recreation area until 1992, when the state turned it over to local control in order to reduce expenses. Operation of the former Bloomer State Park was turned over to the City of Rochester Hills in 1992, and the state deeded the property to the city in 1994.

A major addition was made to the park in 2001-02 when a velodrome was built there. Funded entirely by private donations and designed by Dale Hughes, who had also designed the velodrome for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, the Bloomer velodrome opened to the public on June 1, 2002. As of 2020, it is the only outdoor velodrome in the state of Michigan.

"Four More Parks Donated to State: Mr. and Mrs. H.B. Bloomer Make Presentation," Detroit Free Press, September 27, 1922, p.11.

"Bloomer No.2 Park Improvements are Being Completed," Rochester Era, September 26, 1946, p.3.

Michigan Writers' Project, and Michigan. Parks Division. Park Marks Site of Grandiose Venture: Bloomer No. 2 State Park. [Lansing, Mich.]: Parks Division, Michigan Dept. of Conservation, 1935-1943. 

Grossman, Jay M. "Historic Shelter is Being Revived," Rochester Clarion-Eccentric, August 6, 2000.

Laitner, Bill. " Rochester Hills on a Fast Cycling Track: Bikers Giving City Title to State's Only Velodrome," Detroit Free Press, May 3, 2002, p.4B.