Newburgh Heritage

Frozen river crossings

By Mary McTamaney
Posted 2/1/19

My friend Dae Vitale often opens her column of news about Newburgh with a brief almanac entry about the ever-changing weather scene out over the Hudson River. Those of us who live in view of the …

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Newburgh Heritage

Frozen river crossings

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My friend Dae Vitale often opens her column of news about Newburgh with a brief almanac entry about the ever-changing weather scene out over the Hudson River. Those of us who live in view of the river, and all of you who drive down to watch it flow by, know that it never looks the same from hour to hour. Fogs and mists will float through eclipsing parts of the view to the opposite shore. Dawn and sunset will change the colors of everything in the neighborhood as those moments of amazing clarity let you see all the way to Connecticut and count the cars moving down the road toward Beacon landing. Right now, January cold has frozen parts of the river and ice drifts back and forth on the tide sometimes filling the bay from shore to shore. You can hear it growling as it churns.

The Hudson doesn’t freeze as it once did, solidly from shore to shore. There is always traffic on the river from Coast Guard cutters and tenders to the colorful tugs that haul barges of gravel, cement, oil and other goods north and south. Yet, in my lifetime, I remember a solidly frozen river. Most north-south river traffic stopped during the deep winter weeks of late January into February and more goods moved along the railroad lines. Freight trains, until 1958, travelled both shores. Now they are limited to Newburgh’s west shore.

Yet the intrepid Newburgh-Beacon Ferry almost always made it through, even if just through one narrow lane. The last “great” freeze of the Hudson I could discover was in 1934 when winter ice was 20 to 40 inches thick out there. The ferry was repeatedly trapped and on one day, February 18th, over 500 people walked across the ice from shore to shore while ferry service was halted. That was the first time since 1919 that people had done so, the Newburgh News reported. In the nineteen-teens and before, it was not uncommon to see people on foot or horseback or riding in sleighs out on the river. Imagine our river looking like Lake Champlain during ice-fishing season. With today’s SUV’s, I’m sure there would be lots of folks attempting the passage if climate and industry hadn’t warmed the Hudson.

Along with walkers and drivers, there might be some intrepid ice skaters too. Hard as it is to imagine, when looking out at the rough surface of our broad tidal estuary, the Hudson was a popular place for skating. In the coves along the shore, where ice was left untouched to freeze each day in deeper layers, skating fans would come out to shovel a smooth course and have skating races. These competitions could be small ones among neighbors or bigger events between towns along the shore. One popular spot for skating races was along the north Newburgh shore between the city and the town. A skating track was cleared from Sherman’s Dock (where today’s Pier Loun Condominiums are located) north for about a mile using the hills of Balmville to provide some shelter from the wind. The illustrations shown here are of folks out on the river in the 1890’s. Two couples walk from Beacon back to Newburgh on an icy afternoon and four ladies and a gentleman stand on the hill beside Nicoll Street to watch speed skaters pass Balmville heading for the finish line at Sherman’s Dock.