1912 snowplow buried in snow in Sutton’s Bay. Courtesy worthpoint.com
In the past when a snowstorm came, the romanticized view is that everyone got out their horse and cutter and sailed along with jingle bells ringing. The reality though was often very different.
1935 photo of an automobile buried in snow in front of the Glen Haven Schoolhouse. – Courtesy Leelanau Historical Society
The invention of the snow shovel might have been a reaction to the terrible Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888 which struck the entire Midwest. Snow and ice caused 235 fatalities. The blizzard came unexpectedly on a relatively warm day. Many people were caught unaware, including children in one-room schoolhouses. The following year, 1889, the “scrape and scoop” snow shovel was invented by a woman named Lydia Fairweather (yes, that’s her real name).
That was the winter before the ice cream parlor which is now the Omena Post Office was built. And the winter after Barth’s General store (Omena country Store) was built. There was no snow shovel in existence when Anderson’s store was built either, or when the yellow house Anderson raised his five sons was built. It makes sense that all the buildings that make up downtown Omena are so close to the road. To get through the snow, the snow had to be tramped down.
Even though sleighs stayed on top of the packed down snow, the horses hooves sank down making travel impossible. – Courtesy mlive.com
The road from Traverse City to Omena was cut through the woods 27 years earlier, but they were not plowed out. They were rolled down so sleighs could run over the snow. Sometimes that was not enough. Later they were shoveled out by hand, and still later snow plows came along.
In Omena, we’ve had 150 inches of snow this year. The yearly average is 149.5. We can hope it will soon be time to put the snow shovels away.
Courtesy mprnews, wikipedia, Omena Historical Society,
Omena Bay February 2022 – Photo courtesy Kay Pentzien