During the early 1900s, a Pennsylvania entrepreneur purchased that 387 acres of riverbed, knowing that railroads would be building a bridge somewhere over the James. He sold 7 acres to the railroads for the bridge site and profited handsomely. His heirs finally stopped paying the $6-plus annual tax on the remaining land.

The city of Richmond had tried to sell the remaining 380 acres at its assessed value of $300 in order to collect back taxes, but no one had been interested. Mr. Schaefer, with Keith’s help on the legal problems, purchased the property and paid the back taxes and interest. They located the owner, who long before had moved from the area and who relinquished to them the deed to the land.

In January 1966, he and Keith offered to donate the 380 acres, comprising 2 miles of the James, shore-to-shore and from Reedy Creek at Forest Hill Park to Powhite Creek at Willow Oaks Country Club, to the city with the proviso that the land be preserved as a park. They gave the deed to the city in 1972, when the James River Park System was created. It was the park’s first land acquisition.

Mr. Schaefer, who had been in declining health since suffering several strokes in 2009, died Aug. 7 in a Richmond assisted-living facility he entered in December 2012. He was 86.