14 The Dallas Post Dallas, PA Wednesday, July 13, 1994 Legends of the lake: sinking ice to petrified wagons THE CREAT FAIR By GRACE R. DOVE Post Staff Since its discovery by settlers in 1781, Harveys Lake has ac- quired its share of colorful leg- ends, from disappearing ice and petrified people to sunken steam- ships. Here are a few of them. How Harveys Lake got its name According to F. Charles Petrillo in his book, Harveys Lake, the lake was named for Benjamin Harvey, who had been taken pris- oner from his home on the Susquehanna River in 1780 by a band of Native Americans fighting for the British in the American Revolution. He was taken to Niagara, New York, where he was held for sev- eral months and released in 1781. Hiking to the Chemung River, he stole a canoe and floated down the Susquehanna to Bowman's Creek near Tunkhannock, where he again began to travel on foot because he was afraid that Indi- ans might still be in the area. Following the creek for many miles, he ended up on a hill over- looking a large lake. After walking around the lake . he found a creek, which he fol- lowed back to the Susquehanna River and his former home where Harveys Creek enters it at West Nanticoke. During the 1870's, an unsuc- cessful attempt was made to change Harveys Lake's name to “Skandara,” a concocted Native American-sounding name. A second attempted name change to “Shawanese” in honor of the Shawnee tribe who lived in Wyoming Valley at the mouth of Harveys Creek also failed, living on only in the name of the cen- tury-old Shawanese Post Office at Sunset. Disappearing ice Wayne Smith heard this story from his father, Cornelius Smith, and old Mr. Sorber. An old farmer from Noxen had seen a large hole in the thick lake ice at Point Breeze while walking to catch the trolley to town. When he returned after 12 or 13 hours, the ice had completely disap- peared from the lake. “That old guy went to his grave believing that the ice sank to the bottom of the lake in the spring and rose again in the winter,” Smith chuckled. “He knew that it was impossible to melt that amount of ice in such a short time, even if you put it on dry ground in July. This was the only way he could figure it out.” Smith said that a heavy wind had been blowing that day, push- ing up large waves in the hole in the ice. “The waves probably just chewed the ice right up,” he said. Tame bears Squire Ralph Davis, the local justice of the peace, kept two pet bears during the late 1920's, Smith said. “I was about seven years old A diving helmet made from a water tank didn’t work; the diver died when he kept the first one,” he remembered. One day when Davis had the bear out for a walk on a leash, Smith's father was working be- hind the house. “The bear got near Mrs. Tem- pleton’s pigpen at the same time that she threw out something for the pigs,” he said. “They squealed so loudly that the bear jumped and ran. When I saw it, I took off like a shot and locked myself in my dad's car.” Bear #1 unfortunately met an untimely end when someone poi- soned it, Smith said. Davis’ second bear had a spe- cial den dug into the side of the hill for it to use during hiberna- tion, Smith recalled. When the bear became too big for Squire Davis to handle, he donated it to Kirby Park, where it lived in a cage near the Susquehanna River until the 1936 flood. “All they could do to keep it from drowning was open the door and let it go,” Smith said. “I think that it ended up on top of the mountain, where someone shot wo The petrified wagon team and driver During the winter when it was common to have a good 30 inches ofice on the lake, a popular short- cut for wagon and sleigh teams was directly across the ice to their destinations. A horse team pulling a wagon loaded with logs is said to have gone through the ice, driver and all, despite rescue attempts. Years later, swimmers and divers circulated stories that they had seen the driver, horses and wagon preserved in thick ice at the bottom of the lake. 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Williams, Practical Horscshoer, Cyenceral ROAD AND DRIVING HORSES A SPECIALTY. “ WN Fd had had Del al Sok 20d. 2d Sd J LID COURTESY OF WAYNE SMITH The front page of this flyer promoted the mid-winter carnival of 1906 t the Outlet Alliance Hall, featuring Renard’s Band, a popular group of the time. “That darn fool just ran his Model T out onto the ice, hit a thin spot and went through.” Fred Swanson Former Lake Twp. police chief stories, according to Fred Swan- son, police chief of Lake Township from 1932 until Harveys Lake Borough was formed in 1952. The cottages at the lake had their own ice houses to store ice harvested during the winter and delivered by horse and wagon or truck, Swanson said. “Some of the road rights-of- way on the old maps actually go right down into the lake. The ice was their winter road,” he said. A sunken Model T Ford Back in the days when Squire Davis was the justice of the peace, The Heat Is On! For Fast, Fast Relief a man from Beaumont wanted to harvest some ice from the lake and started cutting by Pole 48 or 49, near the old Sordoni summer home. “I told him how to get there and to be careful of the thin spots,” Swanson recalled. “That darn fool just ran his Model T out onto the ice, hit a thin spot and went through.” By the time that Swanson got to him, wood planks from the Model T's bed were floating in the chill water and the man’s clothes had frozen to his body. Swanson’s wife, Virginia, helped the hapless driver thaw out. Make sure that you have the best Central Air Conditioning System available to provide you with the comfort you deserve. Call our sales office and find out how easy it is to get the best for less!! 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You'll enjoy your choice of Regular or Basic Checking, specifically designed to J TC] ST —— "a" Free Checking Plus $5 Rebate Address: Phone; Y/N [] YES, I'd like a First st Valley Bank Global Access™ card with a $5 rebate offer. es rc oo. wo Hn a on ne ls FIRST VALLEY BANK The Model T is still there in 68 feet of water. A sunken steamship Although cars, bodies, horse- drawn wagons and many other interesting items are reputed to be entombed in Harveys Lake's cold waters, there is some dis- agreement about a sunken steam- ship. “I don’t think it’s there,” Swan- son said. The Wilkes-Barre Traction Company owned four steamboats —- the Natoma, the Acoma, the Wilkes-Barre and the Kingston - and a launch. “The Acoma was the biggest one,” Swanson said. “It was really huge - about 60 feet long. They used to load it to the gunwhales with passengers.” A family living near Squire Davis bought one of the larger steam- boats, which sank at their dock. They raised, renovated and anchored it alongside their dock to use as a permanent place to host parties. The ill-fated diving helmet Several adventurous men de- cided to make a diving helmet from part of an old water boiler with several lengths of garden hose attached for an air supply. Wearing it over his head and shoulders, one of the men had successfully used it once before. When a man drowned, they thought that they would use it to recover his body. “I told them not to use it,” Swanson said. “Those garden hoses didn't give the helmet enough air and the man drowned. I had to pull him out.” Indian encampments No set of American legends is complete without Indians. Early settlers of Harveys Lake said that they often found Indian arrowheads and other relics while plowing their fields in the spring. An early map of the area, dated 1775, shows a large lake with Indian villages along a well-trav- elled Indian path to points north, which was interpreted by some - historians as “proof” that Harveys Lake had been home to the Shawnee and other tribes. Petrillo wrote that the map, once thought to be lost and later found in London, actually indicated Ganoga Lake near Ricketts Glen and not Harveys Lake. Some material from these ar- ticles was obtained from the files of the late Charlot M. Denmon, veteran Dallas Post reporter. Pole numbers— (continued from page 1) “I was the only policeman in Pennsylvania who ¢ would stop, take off my gun belt and fix your washer.” Fred Swanson Former Lake Twp. police chief cut. Swanson had warned one man cutting ice to sell in Beaumont ) about the thin spots, only to seq him take off across the ice in a Model T Ford and go through the ice at a spot which Swanson had told him to avoid. The driver survived, thanks in part ot Swanson's wife, Virginia, who helped thaw him out. The Model T is still there, in 68 feet of water near the Sordoni summer home. Because drownings were coms. mon, Swanson obtained a special’ marine light from Luzerne County - president detective Dick Powell to use while searching for bodies. . “It was enormous, 24 feet long; with a boom in four-foot sections which bolted together,” he said. “Its four 100-watt bulbs, powered - by a generator, resembled a huge flashlight.” The light could also float; making it easier for searchers tg. handle it. Its only drawback was that it could only be used at night be- cause the sunlight reflected off the lake bottom during the day. Swanson recalls names, dates and drownings with a policeman's computerlike mind - the man who fell out of a boat in 98 feet of water: (“It took me a week to find him,”) a boy struck and killed by a mo= torboat in 1939, a man using a homemade diving helmet who drowned while trying to locate anothér drowning victim. He also investigated two mur- ders —alovers’ argument and the celebrated American Tragedy murder, resembling a scene from the play, in which a woman is killed, then dressed in a bathing’ suit and cap and dumped into the lake. : “We had to use a grappling hook to get her out,” he said. -. When Harveys Lake became a. borough in 1952, Swanson left the police force and went to work as head electrician for the Kanarr brothers. “Now it takes ten policemen to do what I did by myself,” he said. “There's a lot more people, a lot more work." Today Swanson, 88, and his wife, Virginia, live in a quiet sec- tion of Lake Township, their home decorated with Swanson’s paint- ings of wildlife and landscapes. Some are framed; others are actu- ally huge murals covering the walls of their bright house. Four Scasons Golf Club 750 Slocum Ave., Exeter © 655-8869 Sunday, July 17th ; Tee times starting at 8 A.M. * $24 per person Includes 18 holes, meal, beverages & prizes. WYOMING VALLEY Heatrn CARE SYSTEM | in conjunction with | The Wyoming Valley Unit of the American Cancer Society, presents the seventh program in the 1994 Cancer Awareness Lecture Series 199% Cancer | Awareness Lecture Series | ‘Cancer of the Endometrium with Martin Freifeld, M.D. Obstetrician/ Gynecologist | Thursday, July 14 at 7 PM TPS Medical Pavilion Auditorium 468 Northampton Street, Edwardsville Admission and refreshments are free. Reservations are required. To make yours, please call 283-4528. This series of educational lectures is under the direction of Karen Cooper, M.D., Medical Oncologist and Chairperson of the Public Education Committee for the Wyoming Valley Unit of the American Cancer Society, fo. L 2
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers