Snow Removal in the 1800’s
By Samantha E.

   The Northeast and the Midwest for hundreds of years have been historically plagued with huge amounts of snowfall.  In order to for the merchants to get their merchandise they frequently hired people to shovel their streets in front of their stores.  The clearing of snow was done in many towns but was not practiced citywide at the time.  During the wintertime in the early 1880s people would travel by foot.  As populations and the demand for supplies grew and the snowstorms became worse it became more of a problem when they had no way of clearing the roads to get the supplies.  People began responding to the clearing of traffic ways and the first patent for the idea of making snowplows was in the 1840s. Several years passed before they decided to put the design of the snowplows to use.  The first mention of actually using the snowplow design was in the town of Milwaukee in 1862.  They plowed the snow by attaching a plow to a wooden cart that would be pulled by a team of horses to move the snow to the side of the road.  Besides using wooden carts with plows on them they also hired horse drawn carts and shovelers. The shovelers would pile the snow into carts to be later dumped into the rivers.  In the western part of the country steam trains with giant rotary plows, like shown in the picture below, were used to plow and blow the snow off the railroad tracks.        

More and more towns began to use carts with plows on the roads to move the snow to the side of the main roadways.  But there were a lot of risks to moving the snow to the side of the road that way.  The roads had ruts and potholes and were very hard to drive on because of how uneven the surface was. Plowing the snow also created huge mounds of uneven snow along the side roads and sidewalks.  The people of the town were not happy about this because the snow would become hard and icy so they could not walk on the snow.  Some cities began to use salt on the ice to allow for ease of walking but pedestrians complained that it would ruin their shoes and their clothes as well as ruin the streets for sleighing. 

Citizens would often times have to shovel their own side roads and sidewalks.  In Deerfield in the year 1843, residents were required to work off road tax based on the price scale as follows: eight cents an hour for a man, eight cents an hour for a yoke of oxen, ten cents an hour for a plough, and four cents per hour for a cart and wheels.  Road tax is still in existence today but is not in the form of a “work off” but in form of a tax bill.  Merchants often had to clear their own roads in order to get their merchandise.

    People often traveled on sleighs built on runners which were two flat metal bars on the bottom of the sleigh that helped the sleigh glide with ease over the snow.    When people were traveling during the winter, they were faced with roads that had ruts and potholes in them making it harder to travel long distances without stopping.  The people would find the nearest tavern and stop for a little while and get something to eat, drink, and maybe even stay the night in the rooms that were available in the tavern.  There were even a few taverns here in Deerfield one of the taverns was owned by Dr. Stephen Brown father of our class project dead person Joseph T. Brown.

    Over the years many things have changed but snowplows are still used by many people both commercially and residentially today.  Although the snowplows are no longer attached to wooden carts and powered by horses they are more effective then they were in the 1800’s.  In addition to plows, they now have spreaders which attach to the back of the vehicle which allows for the even spreading of salt and sand on the roadways.  In 1959, they began to use space satellites to help track when storms were going to hit certain areas of the country.  With the better technology available today, we know what to expect weather wise due to weather reports and can better prepare to handle snow removal efforts.  By knowing what the temperature will be as well as the predicted amount of snowfall, towns and states can more accurately plan on when to being snow plowing and whether to use salt or sand on the roads.  Although most roads today are maintained and plowed by town or state workers there are still some roads that must be maintained by the residents on the road.

Bibliography

Bobbie Kalman, Early Travel, copyright 1981, New York, Crabtree Publishing Company

Bobbie Kalman and Kate Calder, Travel in the Early Days, copyright 2001, New York, Crabtree Publishing Company

Joanne Wasson, Road Work Methods Change In Time, Deerfield County Ledger, December 27, 1989

Have snow shovel, Will Travel: A History of Snow Removal, http://nsidc.org /snow/shovel.html, February 15, 2005