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LA CAROUSEL Last week we featured the upper Kalamazoo River and a few of the turn of the century riverboats. In the next twenty years, the river boats and crusty captains faded into history. Then in 1952, Dick Hoffman, a talented young man who had just finished a four year hitch in the Coast Guard, was looking for a way to earn a living on the banks of the Kalamazoo. The old beach boat Waugun was lying at the end of Lucy St. and for sale cheap. Dick converted her to a stern wheel paddleboat suitable for New Richmond trips and - just like that - he started a business that would become a Saugatuck fixture. The next summer Hoffman revived the river scenic tour business with the rebuilt Waugon. He named her La Carousel, meaning the wheel. In an interview with Kit Lane years later, Dick told an amusing story which captures the flavor of the river tour business as well as Dick’s innovative nature: “I ran that boat and one day I sunk it coming down the river….caught the rudder, one of two rudders, on a snag and it pulled right out of the boat, I went back there to pick up the hatch to see what was wrong and here was this fountain of water coming up…. a great big fountain. I closed the cover quickly. As the rudders were locked off center, I just put the wheel in gear and ran it ashore where it would go… we weren’t under yet but I told the people that we would be, and they had to get off. It was not too deep, but we had twelve ladies from a bridge club, and a family of five, and we were maybe a couple of miles from New Richmond, at least. These were ladies of some weight. I had to carry those ladies from the boat to the bank… we walked back through the woods. If you have ever been in that woods, it is a carpet of poison ivy. Gary Diepenhorst was with me at the time, as sort of a crew; he was fishing as we went along. He said, ‘Is that poison ivy?’ I said, ‘Sssh don’t say a word.’ And those ladies walked through all that poison ivy back to the little store in New Richmond… and you know I never heard of one of them getting poison ivy.” By Jack Sheridan

Remembering When

Winthers, Sally

01/01/2022

04/02/2024