The Eagles Mere Toboggan Slide

The idea isn't new. The Philadelphia Inquirer in its edition of December 23, 1889, described the toboggan slide at "New Irving Hall," Eleventh and Fitzwater streets, Philadelphia.  On opening night, an estimated 1,500 people bought admission tickets and about half that number took a ride on the 1,300 foot toboggan track which included a 150-foot tunnel. Locally, we have used toboggans for years--although lately we have been motorizing them and calling the conveyance "snowmobiles." But the granddaddy of all the toboggan rides will always be in Eagles Mere, 24 miles from Back Home in Benton, PA.

The Philadelphia Inquirer in its edition of January 24, 1903, extolled the toboggan slide at Eagles Mere as the entertainment for the "Eagles Mere winter colony." The article described the ice as "fourteen inches thick, cut from the lake and laid up Lake avenue,"  According to the article, electric lights lined the entire course.  Coaster sleds were used, each holding fourteen people. The tobogganers coasted "half way across the lake, making a quarter mile in twelve seconds."

Buoyed by the success, the next winter local men and boys built a toboggan slide as soon as the ice became a foot thick. They used hand saws to cut the ice and teams of horses to carry blocks of ice to the foot of Lake Avenue where construction of a slide began. The first step in building the slide was marking out the ice field by starting from the shoreline about 25 feet, then heading 140 feet parallel to the bank, marking and then scoring the ice. A 45° angle was made at the corner and a line stretched for 40 feet, marked, then a line drawn in the middle of the field. The marker then made lines 22 inches wide the length of the field. The making of the blocks of ice took many steps of cutting the blocks loose, loading them on trucks and elevators, hauling, unloading, and placing the ice.  Today, snow is packed along the slide, or a fire truck sprays water on the slide. The slide is then grooved two inches deep and 22 inches wide, cleaned and tested for safety. According to the Eagles Mere Slide Association, in 1976 nine pickup trucks drove 225 miles to carry 888 ice blocks weighing 113 tons to build the slide.

The toboggan slide was ready for its first run in January 1904 using lights from electricity generated at Hunters Lake.
	Harry Stevens was chosen to take the first ride. There was no sled available, so Harry decided that his chariot would be an iron scoop-shovel. Onlookers gasped as he sped down the steep incline followed by a cloud of smoke.  By the time he reached the ice on the lake the rear of his pants had completely burned through.  Rides that first year continued until the middle of March.

Most kids today know the inside and outside of a computer, but sliding down a hill on snow has little appeal. For the old-timers, we know what fine sport it is! Few actually know the thrill of loading a herd of people on a bobsled or toboggan and heading hell-bent down the hill and through the snow.  

Fred Mitchel often used the car hood from his father's junked '58 Chevy for a toboggan as he was growing up in the hills around Waller.  The trip down the hill wasn't bad, as Fred and his siblings "piled on for a ride that lasted maybe 30 or 40 seconds," including an airborne bounce over the stone row dividing the fields at the end. The trip up the hill was a different story. "It took all of us and all of an hour to drag that waxed hunk of steel up the hill behind the farmhouse."  Fred also remembers using an old, round, washing-machine lid for rides.  The box the family washing machine came in was a great toboggan, too--until it disintegrated. Sleds with runners were never as much fun as those the kids devised or discovered.

The origin of sledding is unknown to me, but folks have been sliding and bumping down hills for years before I was born.  They often fell from their sleds, but got up with smiling faces.  The introduction of the toboggan made life a lot more tolerable for the lovers of winter sports.

In Canada, where they probably would not have minded the -18° in the Borough or the -21° just south of the Borough Saturday morning, the pastime is popular because there are hills and plenty of snow to cover them.  Some say that toboggoning was originated by Indians in Canada. The original Indian word was "Oda-boggan," and their original toboggans were flat, large sleds made of birch bark or hewn from a tree and turned up on both ends on which Indians pulled deer or bear over the soft snow. A sled with runners would have sunk in the soft snow.  The Indian simply patterned the toboggan after the snowshoes worn in the deep snow. British officers stationed at Montreal made tobogganing into a sport as they coasted down Mount Royal, north of Montreal.

The toboggan of today turns up at one end only and is made of several strips of wood.  As kids, we often tried to make toboggans; the family finances would not permit the purchase of one. Fashioning a board a quarter of an inch thick and sixteen to twenty inches wide was not an easy job!

The best toboggans are about a foot longer than the person riding it is long. The wood is planed and sandpapered smooth and varnish or shellac added to the underside. Some hardwood an inch thick or so is added to the bottom.  A couple of strips of hard wood about four feet long form a rail along the edge of the toboggan.  A couple of leather straps go through eight holes bored in the board, two in the right front, two in the left rear, and so on.

As I once mentioned in the Benton News, toboggans are frail--proven when Dayne Sharek guided a Whizzer of a toboggan on a jump across "Grant Brink's road." The toboggan was mostly good for firewood after the attempt failed.

A toboggan is much more comfortable and safer than a bobsled, but doesn't handle bumps well.  A toboggan needs a smooth surface.  A "chute" or a "slide" such as the one at Eagles Mere is sometimes a mile long.  The slide at Eagles Mere is laid up with blocks of ice and is labor intensive to build.  A "sliding fee" is charged; the Eagles Mere fee in 1929 was ten cents to use the slide.  The 2009 fees have not been announced.

Historically, the chute is simply a wooden gutter or trough and up to two feet wider than the toboggan. The sliding surface is often simply snow, packed about two inches thick, then flooded and allowed to freeze. At Eagles Mere, you'll be safely inside a channel or guide, but as a kid it was necessary to steer the toboggan by leaning and by using the foot.  The person who steers reclines at the rear with one foot under the body and the other extended to drag the heel or toe on the ice. Girls often curled up with a blanket before they began their descent of a hill, and frequently made an attempt to snuggle close to the best-looking boy on the sled.

The curl in the wood at the front of the toboggan was made by steaming the wood or soaking it in hot water.  Although I once tried it, the curl of the wood was far from graceful!

Is there danger?  Other than to the heart and the fingers and toes because of the cold, there probably isn't at Eagles Mere.  It wasn't always that way.  The Philadelphia Inquirer in its edition of February 15, 1889, mused "Maybe the toboggan business could be brought under the law prohibiting travel at a higher rate than seven miles an hour.  A mile in half a minute is too fast." And there was the story reported in the Wilkes-Barre Times in its edition of August 14, 1915, about Madeline Morse, 7, who longed for a toboggan ride. She spread soap on the veranda roof of her parents' home to make a toboggan slide. She failed to catch the eaves and fell fifteen feet. The condition of the girl on arrival was not recorded.

The Eagles Mere Tobogan Slide in the Endless Mountains of Sullivan County. Located on Route 42 in Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania

The Eagles Mere toboggan slide opens to the public today, the Press Enterprise reports in its January 17 edition. The newspaper includes pictures of the construction of the slide in the article entitled "On thick ice at Eagles Mere." Call 570 525-3244 for slide schedules or visit http://eaglesmere.org/

This article first appeared in the daily version of the Benton News on January 17, 2009.