Showing posts with label Gropp's Lake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gropp's Lake. Show all posts
Monday, November 2, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Lakeside Park and Gropp's Lake
I was going to add some information about our neighbor - Lakeside Park- but found that Tom Glover's blog had reams of interesting items about Lakeside in the early years. My memories of Lakeside Park other than swimming and skating were about the Community House. There was such a structure in Lakeside Park. I don't know it's origin or what it's major uses were but I do know that it was used for movies at one point.
Lakeside of course refers to Gropp's Lake which itself had a long history. As kids, we spent many summer days swimming at the lake.
In addition the the beach at the corner of Lakeside Blvd and Broad Street, Yardville Heights had it's own small beach. On the small end of the lake there was a small beach with a rudimentaly dock and ocassionally a diving board. It was used primarily by Height's residents. There was a sandy road that lead down the hill to the beach. Sometimes my Dad would drive down and we would ride back home standing on the running board of the car as it struggled up the hill. There was also a hill leading down from Roy Middleton's home. We called it the Bluff. It was a favorite spot for sledding in the winter. It had a fairly steep incline, a bump about half way down and best of all, if the lake was frozen you could sled right out onto the frozen lake.
We we got older, we could try to swim over to the dam or even over to the bridge.
We also spent a lot of time at the "Corner Store" which was on the Lakeside part of the lake.
It had a decent beach, a fixed diving board, a float, lockers and the store sold food and drinks too.In the winter, the lake often froze enough so that a car could drive on the ice to help clear off the snow.It has been a long time since that lake frose for skating.It was a great lake for skating since you skate for nearly a mile up to the head of the lake.
Of course, we also had bon fires on the beach. The skating wasn't fancy, the ice was often a bit rough for that but we did play "crack-the-whip" and tried to jump over barrels. At night there were some flood lights in the area around the store. In my high school days we were even known to skate off into one of the darker areas at night with a girl friend and do a little necking.
In May 1979 the dam which formed the lake broke during a storm. As a kid, when we had hurricanes or major storms we went down to the dam to watch the thundering flow of water over the dam. It had a flood gate which could be opened to relieve some of the pressure.
and the lake was empty for several years.
Tom Glover mentions going onto the empty lake bed with metal detectors to see what was there I don't know if they found anything. I visited it in he mid 1980's to see what the empty lake looked like. It was a sad looking affair.
Eventually someone realized that the lake was a valuable additon to the area and the dam was rebuilt in late 1987. The lake refilled and while many of the features I knew are no longer there. it is an attractive addition to the ares. I have read blogs from younger people who talk about develped areas on the "Sunnybrea" side of the lake. In the 30's and 40's that side of the lake was just wooded. There were no swimming areas or much of anything else For most of it's life, the lake was a favorite fishing spot. My uncle kept a row boat in the lake at the Yardvile Heights end. We often went fishing on the lake but I don't emember catching much of interest except one Oswego Bass about 12" long that I caught. From it's inception in the late 1800's until today what is known as Gropp's Lake has provided recreation for perhaps hundreds of housands of people.
Lakeside of course refers to Gropp's Lake which itself had a long history. As kids, we spent many summer days swimming at the lake.
In addition the the beach at the corner of Lakeside Blvd and Broad Street, Yardville Heights had it's own small beach. On the small end of the lake there was a small beach with a rudimentaly dock and ocassionally a diving board. It was used primarily by Height's residents. There was a sandy road that lead down the hill to the beach. Sometimes my Dad would drive down and we would ride back home standing on the running board of the car as it struggled up the hill. There was also a hill leading down from Roy Middleton's home. We called it the Bluff. It was a favorite spot for sledding in the winter. It had a fairly steep incline, a bump about half way down and best of all, if the lake was frozen you could sled right out onto the frozen lake.We we got older, we could try to swim over to the dam or even over to the bridge.
We also spent a lot of time at the "Corner Store" which was on the Lakeside part of the lake.
It had a decent beach, a fixed diving board, a float, lockers and the store sold food and drinks too.In the winter, the lake often froze enough so that a car could drive on the ice to help clear off the snow.It has been a long time since that lake frose for skating.It was a great lake for skating since you skate for nearly a mile up to the head of the lake.
Of course, we also had bon fires on the beach. The skating wasn't fancy, the ice was often a bit rough for that but we did play "crack-the-whip" and tried to jump over barrels. At night there were some flood lights in the area around the store. In my high school days we were even known to skate off into one of the darker areas at night with a girl friend and do a little necking.In May 1979 the dam which formed the lake broke during a storm. As a kid, when we had hurricanes or major storms we went down to the dam to watch the thundering flow of water over the dam. It had a flood gate which could be opened to relieve some of the pressure.
and the lake was empty for several years. Tom Glover mentions going onto the empty lake bed with metal detectors to see what was there I don't know if they found anything. I visited it in he mid 1980's to see what the empty lake looked like. It was a sad looking affair.
Eventually someone realized that the lake was a valuable additon to the area and the dam was rebuilt in late 1987. The lake refilled and while many of the features I knew are no longer there. it is an attractive addition to the ares. I have read blogs from younger people who talk about develped areas on the "Sunnybrea" side of the lake. In the 30's and 40's that side of the lake was just wooded. There were no swimming areas or much of anything else For most of it's life, the lake was a favorite fishing spot. My uncle kept a row boat in the lake at the Yardvile Heights end. We often went fishing on the lake but I don't emember catching much of interest except one Oswego Bass about 12" long that I caught. From it's inception in the late 1800's until today what is known as Gropp's Lake has provided recreation for perhaps hundreds of housands of people.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Yardville Heights
YARDVILLE HEIGHTS
Yardville Heights was a fairly isolated little community. It was about 5 miles from Trenton down South Broad Street, one crossed over Gropp's Lake and then on the right side was Highland Avenue which led up to Yardville Heights. The Heights was really "Heights" because it stood on a hill overlooking woods and swamps on 2 sides and the lake on the other. It was a good place for a boy to grow up, there were lots of fields, swamps and woods to play in. From Highland avenue there were two streets that went back and then several more cross streets. I suppose there were 30 or so houses in the 1930's. In my childhood, there was a small grocery store at the corner of our block operated by Mrs. Thompson. I do know that she had penny candy for sale and I suppose other staples. Such a store was necessary because many people did not have cars then and all the mothers I knew stayed at home to care for their children and families. We had a telephone but not everyone had a telephone. Since it was fairly isolated, everyone pretty much knew everyone else by sight if not in more detail. As kids, we were in and out of the houses of our friends. Every Sunday, we made the rounds to Casons, Fronleys and Moores all of whom got different Sunday paper comics than we did. When I was about 8 or so Eddie Cason died from Leukemia so we didn't go there anymore. I dont recall any of the details just that he disappeared from our lives. The Casons later adopted a boy (Eddy Miller) and a girl. In Yardville Heights, there were a lot of people who were related to each other. There were several branches of the Middleton family. The Heights
was surrounded by fields and woods. Across Highland Avenue was farm which was usually farmed with corn, but sometimes pumpkins and other crops. The farm was the full length of Highland Avenue and went almost over to Yardville which was nearly a mile away. It was a good sized farm. I do recall that it was plowed by a horse drawn plow. On the other side of the Heights was South Broad Street and Gropp's Lake and then on the third side was the Little Creek which ran from a dam at the end of the lake out to the Big Crick which was on the fourth side. The Little Crick was bordered by woods and the Heights was on a hill. From the back of the Heights, we had to go down fairly steep wooded hills to get to the creeks. The big creek was bordered by swamps where muskrats lived and during the winter a lot of the local boys trapped muskrats and sold the skins. I never had traps myself but often helped kids who did when they made the rounds of the traps. In the very early spring, usually late March on the first warm day, we always wanted to get the swimming season started. We would go down the hill behind Bunky Middleton's house to the little crick to our swimming spot in the crick. There was a big birch tree overhanging the crick that we used for diving. We would strip and hop in to get our first swim of the season. We didn't bother with bathing suits, girls never went any where near the woods as far as I know. Later in the season, we swam there a lot as well as in the lake. The little crick was a favorite spot. From our swimming spot it was possible to walk in the crick out to where it intersected the Big Crick. The big crick was bigger, wider and faster moving. We didn't do too much swimming in it but there was some great mud out there, real thick and black and gooey. We liked to go out and get all smeared over with it.
I'm not sure now why we did it but it seemed like fun then. It took a while to get rid of the mud when we got back in the water. The woods around Yardville Heights were a favorite playing spot. We had trails all through the woods. We knew them intimately and some were used in winter for sledding, others were just trails along the creeks. We knew where the springs were where we could get a drink of water. At the base of the hill, there were several cisterns. Yardville Heights, when I was very small, had it's own water system. The cisterns were the source for water from the swamp area to filter in to be pumped up the hill to a big water tank. The pump house was at the foot of the hill. When I was still rather young, the city water system reached the Heights and the local system was left to go in disrepair. It was probably a good thing because the people who operated the system sometimes forget to go down to turn on the pumps to refill the main storage tank. People would have no water and they would have to get someone to turn on the pumps. In the winter there were several spots that were favorites for sledding. Bakers Hill near the middle of the back of the Heights was the best. It was longer and had nice curves in it as it went down through the woods. One summer we built sides on some of the curves so they were banked for speed. Lockwood's hill nearby was also good but did not have any curves in it. There were things in the woods that we liked to do, there were always logs across the cricks to walk across. There were certain places were we knew there was a clay bank where we could get clay to try to making pots "like the Indians did". We knew where the nicest flowers grew, dogwood, violets, may apples, wild azaleas, lady slippers, jack in the pulpits. Sometimes we picked them and tried to sell them to some of the neighbors. In the woods we played games like "Release". We had teams and a jail, the object was to capture a member of the opposing team and put him in the jail. His team would then try to sneak up and tag him to "release" him from the jail. The games would last for hours and we roamed all over the woods to hide from the opposing team while trying to release a captive.
Back home at the house, we had a good sized lawn which we cut with a reel type power lawn mower, one of the first in the neighborhood. Earlier, my grandfather had cut it with a push mower. We played games on the lawn. In my ;youngest days, we played Kick the Wicket and Hide and Seek. Later on it was football. We always had a football game going in the side yard. We also had a "basketball court" at an old barn on the lot next door We had a hoop stuck on the side of the barn and we cleared out bushes and weeds to make a bare dirt "court". It was not like the smooth courts kids have now but we spent many hours shooting baskets. Fortunately, we didn't have adults telling us what to do or how to do things. Bicycles were big, we all had bikes. We didn't roller skate because there weren't many good sidewalks. We rode around the neighborhood on our bikes and set up ramps to jump on. The sort of things do now on skateboards. Being near a lake, we did a lot of swimming at Gropp's Lake. The Heights had it's own little beach with a small dock/diving board. I learned to swim at the YMCA, my mother took me up there once or twice a week one summer. At Lakeside we swam across to the bridge or over to the dam. The dam overflow formed the little creek. In retrospect, the little creek probably wasn't the best place to swim. It was fed by the lake but along side the dam was a dump, a lot of the garbage and trash from Trenton was dumped into that dump. It was actively used and you could see rats running around it, sometimes we used rifle to shoot at them. Half the time it was burning and any water that fell on the dump from rain washed right into the little creek so we were swimming in polluted water. The dam itself was fairly sturdy but once in a while in a big rain storm the water would go over the top of the dam in a stream several feet thick and they would struggle to open flood gates to relieve the pressure. After I left home, the dam finally broke and the lake drained. It was empty for several years until a new dam was built.
We did a lot of sledding in the winter, at Bakers Hill and Lockwood but also on the Bluff. The Bluff was the hill that lead from behind Middleton's in the Heights down to the lake. When there was snow and also ice on the lake we could sled down the bluff, which had a nice bump in it, down on to the ice. The lake was a great place to ice skate and we looked forward to the time the ice was strong enough to skate on. We cleared off the snow so we could play hockey.. Sometimes we just liked to skate through the snow. We always careful because there were always a few spots were the ice didn't freeze completely. As a youngster, we spent a lot of time building model airplanes. The first World War hadn't been over too long (15 18 years) so the Boy's magazines had lots of articles about war planes, (G8 and the Flying Aces) and air battles. Airplanes were a big thing they were not very common. If an airplane flew over, we kids would ruin outside to see it. We also got to see dirigibles because we were not too far from Lakehurst Naval Air Station were most Airships were based. We spent many hours building model planes. Clarence Heaton (Clink) had a small room in a garage back of his house where we often did our model building. His house also had a 3rd story attic where we would take or balsa wood tissue airplanes to fly out the window. If a plane didn't fly well or got damaged, the most fun was setting it on fire and launching it from the attic window. As I got older I continued to build models and at one point in High School had a gas engine for a model though I never really got it running in a plane..
Yardville Heights was a fairly isolated little community. It was about 5 miles from Trenton down South Broad Street, one crossed over Gropp's Lake and then on the right side was Highland Avenue which led up to Yardville Heights. The Heights was really "Heights" because it stood on a hill overlooking woods and swamps on 2 sides and the lake on the other. It was a good place for a boy to grow up, there were lots of fields, swamps and woods to play in. From Highland avenue there were two streets that went back and then several more cross streets. I suppose there were 30 or so houses in the 1930's. In my childhood, there was a small grocery store at the corner of our block operated by Mrs. Thompson. I do know that she had penny candy for sale and I suppose other staples. Such a store was necessary because many people did not have cars then and all the mothers I knew stayed at home to care for their children and families. We had a telephone but not everyone had a telephone. Since it was fairly isolated, everyone pretty much knew everyone else by sight if not in more detail. As kids, we were in and out of the houses of our friends. Every Sunday, we made the rounds to Casons, Fronleys and Moores all of whom got different Sunday paper comics than we did. When I was about 8 or so Eddie Cason died from Leukemia so we didn't go there anymore. I dont recall any of the details just that he disappeared from our lives. The Casons later adopted a boy (Eddy Miller) and a girl. In Yardville Heights, there were a lot of people who were related to each other. There were several branches of the Middleton family. The Heights
was surrounded by fields and woods. Across Highland Avenue was farm which was usually farmed with corn, but sometimes pumpkins and other crops. The farm was the full length of Highland Avenue and went almost over to Yardville which was nearly a mile away. It was a good sized farm. I do recall that it was plowed by a horse drawn plow. On the other side of the Heights was South Broad Street and Gropp's Lake and then on the third side was the Little Creek which ran from a dam at the end of the lake out to the Big Crick which was on the fourth side. The Little Crick was bordered by woods and the Heights was on a hill. From the back of the Heights, we had to go down fairly steep wooded hills to get to the creeks. The big creek was bordered by swamps where muskrats lived and during the winter a lot of the local boys trapped muskrats and sold the skins. I never had traps myself but often helped kids who did when they made the rounds of the traps. In the very early spring, usually late March on the first warm day, we always wanted to get the swimming season started. We would go down the hill behind Bunky Middleton's house to the little crick to our swimming spot in the crick. There was a big birch tree overhanging the crick that we used for diving. We would strip and hop in to get our first swim of the season. We didn't bother with bathing suits, girls never went any where near the woods as far as I know. Later in the season, we swam there a lot as well as in the lake. The little crick was a favorite spot. From our swimming spot it was possible to walk in the crick out to where it intersected the Big Crick. The big crick was bigger, wider and faster moving. We didn't do too much swimming in it but there was some great mud out there, real thick and black and gooey. We liked to go out and get all smeared over with it.
I'm not sure now why we did it but it seemed like fun then. It took a while to get rid of the mud when we got back in the water. The woods around Yardville Heights were a favorite playing spot. We had trails all through the woods. We knew them intimately and some were used in winter for sledding, others were just trails along the creeks. We knew where the springs were where we could get a drink of water. At the base of the hill, there were several cisterns. Yardville Heights, when I was very small, had it's own water system. The cisterns were the source for water from the swamp area to filter in to be pumped up the hill to a big water tank. The pump house was at the foot of the hill. When I was still rather young, the city water system reached the Heights and the local system was left to go in disrepair. It was probably a good thing because the people who operated the system sometimes forget to go down to turn on the pumps to refill the main storage tank. People would have no water and they would have to get someone to turn on the pumps. In the winter there were several spots that were favorites for sledding. Bakers Hill near the middle of the back of the Heights was the best. It was longer and had nice curves in it as it went down through the woods. One summer we built sides on some of the curves so they were banked for speed. Lockwood's hill nearby was also good but did not have any curves in it. There were things in the woods that we liked to do, there were always logs across the cricks to walk across. There were certain places were we knew there was a clay bank where we could get clay to try to making pots "like the Indians did". We knew where the nicest flowers grew, dogwood, violets, may apples, wild azaleas, lady slippers, jack in the pulpits. Sometimes we picked them and tried to sell them to some of the neighbors. In the woods we played games like "Release". We had teams and a jail, the object was to capture a member of the opposing team and put him in the jail. His team would then try to sneak up and tag him to "release" him from the jail. The games would last for hours and we roamed all over the woods to hide from the opposing team while trying to release a captive.
Back home at the house, we had a good sized lawn which we cut with a reel type power lawn mower, one of the first in the neighborhood. Earlier, my grandfather had cut it with a push mower. We played games on the lawn. In my ;youngest days, we played Kick the Wicket and Hide and Seek. Later on it was football. We always had a football game going in the side yard. We also had a "basketball court" at an old barn on the lot next door We had a hoop stuck on the side of the barn and we cleared out bushes and weeds to make a bare dirt "court". It was not like the smooth courts kids have now but we spent many hours shooting baskets. Fortunately, we didn't have adults telling us what to do or how to do things. Bicycles were big, we all had bikes. We didn't roller skate because there weren't many good sidewalks. We rode around the neighborhood on our bikes and set up ramps to jump on. The sort of things do now on skateboards. Being near a lake, we did a lot of swimming at Gropp's Lake. The Heights had it's own little beach with a small dock/diving board. I learned to swim at the YMCA, my mother took me up there once or twice a week one summer. At Lakeside we swam across to the bridge or over to the dam. The dam overflow formed the little creek. In retrospect, the little creek probably wasn't the best place to swim. It was fed by the lake but along side the dam was a dump, a lot of the garbage and trash from Trenton was dumped into that dump. It was actively used and you could see rats running around it, sometimes we used rifle to shoot at them. Half the time it was burning and any water that fell on the dump from rain washed right into the little creek so we were swimming in polluted water. The dam itself was fairly sturdy but once in a while in a big rain storm the water would go over the top of the dam in a stream several feet thick and they would struggle to open flood gates to relieve the pressure. After I left home, the dam finally broke and the lake drained. It was empty for several years until a new dam was built.
We did a lot of sledding in the winter, at Bakers Hill and Lockwood but also on the Bluff. The Bluff was the hill that lead from behind Middleton's in the Heights down to the lake. When there was snow and also ice on the lake we could sled down the bluff, which had a nice bump in it, down on to the ice. The lake was a great place to ice skate and we looked forward to the time the ice was strong enough to skate on. We cleared off the snow so we could play hockey.. Sometimes we just liked to skate through the snow. We always careful because there were always a few spots were the ice didn't freeze completely. As a youngster, we spent a lot of time building model airplanes. The first World War hadn't been over too long (15 18 years) so the Boy's magazines had lots of articles about war planes, (G8 and the Flying Aces) and air battles. Airplanes were a big thing they were not very common. If an airplane flew over, we kids would ruin outside to see it. We also got to see dirigibles because we were not too far from Lakehurst Naval Air Station were most Airships were based. We spent many hours building model planes. Clarence Heaton (Clink) had a small room in a garage back of his house where we often did our model building. His house also had a 3rd story attic where we would take or balsa wood tissue airplanes to fly out the window. If a plane didn't fly well or got damaged, the most fun was setting it on fire and launching it from the attic window. As I got older I continued to build models and at one point in High School had a gas engine for a model though I never really got it running in a plane..
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