Paul Griffith of Mecosta County

After a career at Michigan Works!, Paul Griffith has found a fulfilling second act. He’s a friend of the White Pine Trail, a 92-mile fully paved trail stretching from Grand Rapids all the way to Cadillac, and a self-proclaimed “ambassador” for Big Rapids as a Pure Michigan Trail Town. He also helped find a tenant for the historic depot and supported development of the adjacent Depot Trailhead Park, which was funded in part by a Revitalization and Placemaking (RAP) grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC).

Whether fundraising for the local recycling organization, riding his bike with the Silver Spokes, or talking up the historic markers for the White Pine Trail, Paul is a living link to Mecosta County’s past and an upbeat proponent for its bright future.

Half a Century in Big Rapids

“I was born and raised in Muskegon and spent my first 20 years there. I came to Ferris State University, which was called Ferris State College back then, in the early 1970s as a transfer student from Muskegon Community College, and I never left town. I’ve lived here for over 50 years. We have a son and a daughter who grew up here. We love the small-college-town life.

My first job was with Ferris in what was called the Local Government Services Center. We partnered with six community colleges and served as a resource to a lot of small communities, particularly townships. You wouldn't believe all the types of questions we were asked.

That morphed in a relatively short period of time into employment and training, or what is now referred to as talent development. The organization became a regional governement agency serving a five-county area under federal legislation called the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), which goes back to the 1970s and is more recently known as Michigan Works!. I moved into the director position in the mid-70s, and that was my career.

In 2015, when Governor Snyder said, ‘I'd like to see a smaller number of Michigan Works,’ we acquired Oceana County. We covered Mecosta, Osceola, Lake, Newaygo, Oceana and Mason counties with six offices, one in each county.

I was also very involved with economic development. I was on the Mecosta County Development Corporation, president of the Big Rapids Industrial Development Corporation and involved in Mason and Newaygo counties as well. I knew when new projects were coming on board, which was when we would help those companies find their employees.

I was fortunate to have a nice, smooth transition to retirement. I’ve never had to say, ‘This is boring.’ I've been very fortunate to be almost too busy.

I have several areas where I’m heavily involved with the parks, the White Pine Trail and others. I consider myself an ambassador. I'm on the Park Commission, in my second three-year term. I'm also significantly involved in our county-wide recycling organization, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) that has been around for 39 years. In the last three years, we've raised $30,000 for a new forklift, and we recently raised $50,000 for a new box truck. We got a new logo and new name, Mecosta Recycles. Deb Muchmore helped us tremendously in rebranding and got me connected with people who rebuilt our website and outfitted our new box truck with an awesome wrap. She guided us very helpfully over the last couple of years in this whole effort.

I’d also give a shout out to Andrea LaFontaine, the executive director of Michigan Trails and Greenways Alliance. Through my trails journey, I’ve been fortunate to connect with Andrea. She’s a tremendous resource for everything ‘Trails’.

Depot Repo

The story of the depot is a long one. The DNR owned it for 25 years, but they didn’t have a use for it and it fell into disrepair. There was a lot of back and forth about whether the city could get it for $1, but that came with a restriction that it could only ever be used for a public purpose, which excluded a restaurant, a bike shop or even the Chamber of Commerce.

Ultimately, the DNR put it up for an online auction four years ago. The city set a maximum bid of $60,000, but they were outbid. A couple from Houston, Texas, the Klussmanns, ended up winning the auction, which turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened. They have a summer home in Cadillac and decided to buy the depot. They are the neatest couple and have put at least a couple hundred thousand dollars into renovating it.

I have been on a quiet mission for five years to find a bicycle shop for Big Rapids. For 20 to 25 years, there hasn’t been one within a 40-mile radius. I connected with the owner of Einstein Cycles, which has shops in Traverse City and Cadillac. This spring he opened a bicycle shop in the old depot in Big Rapids.

The Depot Trailhead Park is on two acres of adjacent property that the city bought from the DNR. The new depot owners had a great idea. They suggested the city’s new pavilion have the same roofing and color scheme as the depot so it looks like one cohesive project. The city applied for an MEDC RAP grant. They asked for half a million, got $450,000, and matched it. As of this June, the park is completed.

The park and depot together are about two and a half acres right along the trail. It's a great story, and it’s on the east side of town, which can use some extra love.

92 Miles on the White Pine Trail

Before I retired, I hadn't done a lot of bike riding. I got connected with a group called the Silver Spokes, and they bike every Monday and Thursday all around West Michigan. I only live a mile from the White Pine Trail. It's not the best access—I have to go on a pretty busy road, but I can maneuver that—and I can ride from my house to the trail. I made connections with the Friends of the White Pine Trail, stayed involved and ended up doing maintenance.

Getting the trail paved this year was huge. I've only been involved for six or seven years, but our chairman has been involved since day one in the late 1990’s. That's been a long journey, starting with Fred Meijer donating a million dollars 20 years ago. A million dollars then was really a lot of money. Fred Meijer has his name on 13 trails that constitute about 300 miles in West Michigan. The White Pine Trail is essentially one-third of those 300 miles.

It’s part of the original Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad, which started in Richmond, Indiana, and went all the way to Mackinac City, well over 400 miles. We were fortunate to have a 92-mile stretch completely preserved.

The DNR has six Heritage Trails, and we will be the seventh and the longest. Now that the trail is 100% paved, the DNR History Center will be installing 21 large signs that combine wayfinding with local history. Fifteen of the signs will be for the 15 communities along the trail, and six will be in what are called ‘ghost towns.’ A hundred years ago, 29 communities existed along what’s now the White Pine Trail. Now, there are only 15.

Around 1925, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone were buddies, and they loved to listen to fiddling. They found a fiddler in Paris, Michigan, Jep Bisbee, who was the state champion. They went to his house, and he entertained them. They were so impressed that Henry Ford gave Jeb a new car, and Thomas Edison arranged to send him to New York to have 80 of his songs recorded. That’s one of the stories that will be on the signs. It’s just a couple of paragraphs, but it’ll have a QR code you can scan to listen to Jep fiddle from 100 years ago.

Purely Trails

I saw that Reed City had applied to become a Pure Michigan Trail Town. The White Pine Trail runs through five counties, but about 48 miles of the trail are in Mecosta and Osceola counties. And Reed City also has the Pere Marquette State Trail going through east-west. I thought, ‘Well, shoot, we should do that for Big Rapids.’

The City of Big Rapids was awarded an 18-month economic development fellowship, and one of the projects for the Fellow was to put together the application for the DNR. I helped a lot with that. This person was not from the community, so I gave her a lot of information, and she did the writing, gathered pictures and put the data together. And we were successful.

I was successful in getting Cadillac to do the same thing. I was hoping to have five towns on the White Pine Trail all be designated trail towns, but the other towns haven’t materialized so far. We're pretty proud of being one of them. Having the three northernmost towns—Cadillac, Reed City, and Big Rapids—all as Trail Towns is great.

Mecosta and Me 

There’s a lot to love in Mecosta County. Our Dragon Trail, with one-third in Mecosta and two-thirds in Newaygo, is a great partnership. It’s on 4,000 acres of the backwaters of the Hardy Dam. The first mile of the trail is accessible for people in wheelchairs. While it was just finished in September 2024, it’s already been highly rated by trail and biking groups, and logged over 100,000 users in the last year.

Another jewel in Mecosta County is Canadian Lakes. It was kept a secret for a long time. We have two championship golf courses, St. Ives and Tullymore, that are pretty high-end.

There’s also a 39-mile bike loop, of which 30 miles are on paved state and county road shoulders and nine miles connect via the White Pine Trail. They have great signage and crossings. So, we have lots of trails: the White Pine, the Dragon, this road loop, the Riverwalk in Big Rapids, White Pine Valley Recreation Area and Pine Grove. We also have the Muskegon River, the second-longest river in Michigan, which flows through our entire county and had three kayak launches installed in the last three years.

And the big thing, obviously, is Ferris State University. We have three national Division II championships in football in the last four years and were national Division II champions in men’s basketball in 2018. Ferris has been around since 1884 and offers a lot of unique, hands-on demand-driven programs like optometry, pharmacy, the National Elastomer Center for plastics and rubber, heavy equipment repair, cybersecurity and AI, to mention just a few. It’s not Michigan or Michigan State, but it’s a pretty big deal for a small community like ours.”