With a winter storm predicted for this weekend, it’s a perfect time to take a trip down Memory Lane. Ever wonder how people in the Midcoast dealt with honking piles of snow clogging the dirt roads of Main Street without snow plows?

We spoke to members of the Rockland Historical Society to find out several ways they did it.

“On the main streets, they used a bunch of people with shovels, who were mainly just citizens who made a couple of bucks for the day,” said Ben Perry. “They’d just all work together to shovel the snow into sleighs pulled by horses or they’d pile it up on sidewalks. It didn’t remove all of the snow for people to use the sidewalks, but just enough to clear the streets. Then they’d lead the horses down to the harbor and they’d dump the snow in the water.”

Andrew Carpenter added: “I can tell you from the research I've done that it was common for men of all walks of life (from bankers to lime kiln tenders) to come together to help clear Main Street. Small bands would often play music for the men and stores would provide warm drinks and food.”

Sometimes they’d rig up a large shovel system to a team of horses and let the animals to the work, as seen in the middle photo of horses clearing snow on Tillson Avenue c.1920. Thomas Shapiro’s junk store at 55 Tillson Avenue can be seen in the background with the Coca-Cola sign.

When it was time to bring out the big guns, they used a wooden snow roller.

According to Maine Memory Network: “A snow roller was an over-sized wooden barrel that would be filled with water in the winter so it could freeze to provide the weight to pack down the snow. These were pulled by a double team of horses consisting of four. Instead of plowing the snow to the side of the road, the weight of these huge, heavy wooden rollers compacted the snow into a hard surface that horses, buggies, and wagons could travel on.”

Going on information his friend’s father told him 20 years ago, Richard Kahn said: “The first time you could use a car in the winter was around 1929. It was something like that, but before that the rollers would pack down the snow hard to a smooth surface so that sleighs could travel over the snow.”

The more you know...

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com