Winter Scenes
Winters used to be terribly long years ago. Ice could be found in Lake Michigan as late as May, in the early days delaying the shipping season when critical supplies needed to be brought in. But Charlevoix learned to cope, hunkering down when the big lake blasted its winds and snows across the town, often burying it, then shoveling out to enjoy the calm until the next onslaught. Here, a flivver strains to ascend the Grant Street hill at Lake Michigan Beach, with a patchwork blanket protecting the engine in place of a hood.
Every winter, Round Lake was expected to freeze long enough for a small city of fish shanties to dot it for a few months. For some families, fish caught through the holes in the ice was their main supply of food over the winter. In the winter of 1932, an unusual mild spell prevented Round Lake from freezing. But that did not deter a few ingenious souls. About a dozen set out for their quarry of perch on open rafts constructed of timbers mounted on empty oil drums, shanties placed on rafts, and rowboats encased with canvas housings.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, every winter Thursday afternoon an iced-over downtown Bridge Street was cordoned off while Charlevoix turned into whiz-bang bobsled run. The whole town closed up shop, even the schools. Away they flew down the slick south hill, through town, and over the channel until the north hill’s rise slowed their momentum. The goal was to top the hill at Dixon Avenue. Ed O’Neill’s taxi retrieved the larger sleds while riders of the smaller ones walked back through town with sleds in tow, trudged up the hill, piled on, and did it again. Could anything be more simple, more fun?
A winter sports festival was held for many years north of town at Mt. McSauba, the forested sand dune that dominates the northern skyline. A ski jump and toboggan run was cut through the trees on the southern exposure, and a hockey rink laid out at the base. Hundreds of spectators gathered to witness the events.
Dave Eckinger, fisherman and ice harvester, enjoys a sail with his wife and three lady friends in February, 1916. Ice boating was once one of the most popular winter sports in the region. Charlevoix boasted one of the finest racing fleets in the state. Capable of breathtaking speeds, under ideal conditions an iceboat could easily beat an automobile down Lake Charlevoix. A fifteen m.p.h. wind could send one flying up to ninety m.p.h. The trip to Boyne City took less than ten minutes. It was called “flying without benefit of wings.”
Every winter for decades the narrow grounds east of the schools were flooded to create an ice skating rink. Generations of residents remember the loudspeaker perched in the high school window that broadcast scratchy waltzes and fox trots. The warming and changing shed had a wood floor scuffed and slivered from thousands of skate blades over the years. Its potbellied stove often glowed red, making wet wool garments steam in the humid air that provided a few moments of warmth on those cold, wonderful days and nights.
For many years, it was expected that Mother Nature would perform a magic act and ice caves would form along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Wind, water, snow, and ice blown from the west combined to create these wonders. For weeks, constant winds lifted the spray from the tops of breaking waves and gradually built the freezing particles into structures that were in some places so high an adult could walk around in the caverns formed with headroom to spare. In the 1920s and 30s these ice caves became an important winter tourist attraction.