Happy Birthday: Bring on the cake and candles

The Beckstoffer's Mill Blog is one year old so I will be reposting a few of the first posts from April 2010, with some minor edits to clean up style and spelling mistakes.  It has been fun so far and I look forward to even more posts (and hopefully comments from others) in the months to come.

1917 Snapshot of Henry

A publication called Richmond Virginia A Glance at Her History: A Review of Her Progress; A Sketch of Her Commerce featured Henry in 1917. 

Among the men of industrial affairs who have been highly instrumental in the advancement of the building interests of the city, is Mr. Henry Beckstoffer.  This gentlemen has been a resident of Richmond for the past eighteen years and is a native of Hanover, Germany, and we can truly say there is no citizen of Richmond more highly respected or more loyal to its interests.  Mr. Beckstoffeer established himself in business fifteen year ago and has given to Richmond one of her greatest and most modern woodworking plants.  His planing mill is equipped according to the most modern ideas, with all kinds of woodworking machinery and the plant and yards cover nearly an entire city block.  The products include all kinds of lumber, laths, shingles, sash, doors, frames, all kinds of fancy mill work, and in fact everything required in the line for general home building. These products are broadly sold throughout Richmond and the central part of the state.  The plant is located at 1209 North Twenty-eighth street, and has phone Madison 5013. 

The Theme Park that Beckstoffer's built

Now that Spring is in full swing, local amusement park King's Dominion has opened its doors for the season and I wanted to recognize the important role that the Mill played with respect to King's Dominion's start over 35 years ago.    A Richmond general contractor still in business to this day named Kjellstrom & Lee (K&L) was awarded much of the construction work and placed numerous orders for millwork for KD in 1974 and 1975 and this project was a huge source of business for the Mill in 1975.  That year orders from K&L for the park were for $326,000 of work, which represented almost 40% of all orders in '75.  Without the work for King's Dominion, sales that year would have been reduced from $833,753 to $507,179 and made it a fairly average year for the seventies.  Instead 1975 became the highest selling year for Beckstoffers up to that point.

Some of the buildings millwork was needed for include your standard theme park buildings like souvenir stands, games buildings, and first aid pavilions, but a number of the orders placed at Kings Dominion were for millwork for themed family leisure centers including French, German, Swiss and Italian buildings. 

The park held a soft opening in 1974 followed by a formal opening in 1975.  In 1975 the park opened with 15 rides including a log flume, antique cars, steam train, Ghoster Coaster and Rebel Yell roller coasters and a collection of flat rides.

K&L did business with Beckstoffer's since at least 1965.  To learn more about the firm, go here.