Last week we looked at some “winter’s tales” from our area, and this week – we have some more! Seems like the Finger Lakes winters provided a lot of time to spin some stories, still remembered more than a century later.

1890s – Good Skating
The tale is told that steamboat builder A. W. Springstead, constructing a boat in Hammondsport, had to meet fellow Keuka Lake navigation mogul Henry Morse in Penn Yan. But the lake was frozen over, and the roads, even without snow, were pretty much useless. A trip by rail would cost him two days. So he strapped on his ice skates, and schussed himself along all the way from Hammondsport to Penn Yan, talked things over with Henry, and skated back home in time for dinner. No word on what his big blue ox was doing! Since this would require 42 miles of skating, all on the same day, you’re welcome to take the story just as you like. I MIGHT buy this with an ice BOAT. But I’d still have my doubts.

Turn of the Century – Good Sledding
Hammondsport kids loved to go sledding (or sliding, or coasting) on Pulteney Street in the village – it was their favorite spot. Corning kids zoomed WAY down those long straight steep streets on the south side. By the time of World War I or so, those activities had to be banned. Cars had become far too common, and silent snowy streets became a memory.

1901 – Getting the Mail
Frank Houck had the seasonal mail contracts for the routes from Penn Yan to Wayne and from Hammondsport to Dundee. He ran these routes as long as the lake was frozen up, after which the customary steamboat delivery – the preferred method – resumed.

1901 – The Iceman Laboreth
The ice on Lake Salubria was a foot thick in 1901, and it wasn’t going to go to waste. Workers were cutting it into more-or-less manageable blocks and sending it to shore with horse-drawn sledges. Once there it would be packed into icehouses and passively preserved for the height of summer, in a world without refrigeration. The Shannon steam plant in Penn Yan used 6000 box cars to ship out 20,000 tons of the stuff that season. This was also happening at multiple places on each of the Finger Lakes, and on smaller bodies such as Thurston Pond, Howard Pond, and the Prattsburgh reservoir. It looks romantic now, but it was wet, freezing, backbreaking work.

The same could be said for maple sugaring. Imagine spending every day in deep snow, lugging two buckets at a time on every trip, and getting soaked from spills while you’re doing it. And you HAVE to do it, because the cows aren’t giving at this season, and you need the maple sales to pay the taxes. “The good old days.”

1908 – Into the Air
Glenn Curtiss loved skating, and biking, and motorcycling, and anything else that involved going fast. By early 1908, Glenn and his friends had finished their first experimental airplane. As lead designer on this aircraft, Lt. Tom Selfridge would of course have the honor of piloting its first flight. But Tom had been sent off on army duty, and Curtiss warned the others – the ice wouldn’t last. So on March 12 steamboat Springstead chugged from Hammondsport out to the edge of the ice and slid the airplane Red Wing onto the frozen surface of Keuka. Engineer Casey Baldwin revved her up, skidded down the ice, lifted into the air, flew 319 feet, and landed safely. No man, and no airplane, had ever flown so far on their first attempt. It crashed in a second flight, on St. Patrick’s Day. Tom Selfridge never saw his airplane in a completed, intact state.