Valley Girl Views: The Eagles Mere Toboggan Slide

The Eagles Mere Toboggan Slide 1903-to present

The back of the above postcard reads:

From the Eagles Mere Toboggan Website:

"Capt. E.S. Chase stood at the edge of the lake one January day watching his grandchildren. They asked him why he couldn’t build a “real good” toboggan slide down the slope of Lake Avenue. It was a logical idea. He began work on a design and method for building a toboggan slide that would be safe, sturdy and continued pleasure for Eagles Mere residents. The slide today is executed from these original plans using Capt. Chase’s planer and his method of grooving the ice. The Captain had a wooden toboggan built with three metal runners to fit the groove made in the ice of the slide."

In 1903 the Times Leader was already referring to the "famous toboggan slide" at Eagles Mere.

In February 1903 the Republican reported:

"A stray photographer with a "quick as lightning camera" was here the other day, and one of our prominent "hoosiers" thought it would be a fine thing to have his photo taken while riding down the ice slide. Accordingly he mounted his "tobog" and started on the down trip, Mr. Snap-shot clicked his ma-. chine and all was over. When the photograph was developed it simply showed a long black streak with bulging eyes holding with a death like grip, to what looked like a long stick rounded at the front end. No use talking our slide is certainly swift.....

The ice slide has attracted the most attention of any one: thing. Aside from being unique in manner of construction it proves that the builders were wide awake enough to build something swift. Talk about any one being asleep on that slide! Why even the engineer and crew of the Eagles Mere Lightning Express acknowledge its swiftness. They tried the "tobog" the other day and before half the distance had been had been past the engineer, conductor and all the crew were hooting out "toot, toot, toot," for down break. It was of no avail however, for the toboggans here care not for general managers, superintendents or high and mighty potentates of any kind, and shot the boys across the Lake in less time than it takes to change the Eagles Mere R. R. time table."

UNIQUE TOBOGGAN SLIDE; WILKESBARRE MAN CONSTRUCTS ONE AT EAGLESMERE OF THICK BLOCKS OF ICB-SLEDS RUN AT RATE OF NINETY MILES AN HOUR.

[1903 Wilkes Barre Paper]

"There has been constructed at Eagles-mere a toboggan slide that Is probably unique. It was built by E. S. Chase, formerly of Wilkes-Barre and is affording Eagles mere visitors rare sport. It is constructed on an avenue of Eagles mere leading down a sharp declivity to the lake and having no cross streets, there ls no danger of colliding with teams- or pedestrians. It ls not built on a frame-work as toboggans usually are, but Is constructed of gr-eat- blocks of Ice, so laid as to cover the avenue, with a massive pavement of ice.

The people turned out with much enthusiasm to cut the ice from the lake, it having a thickness of fourteen Inches. When, the ice pavement has been laid all the way up the avenue from the lake to the top of the hill an Ice planer was brought into use and with it a groove for the toboggans was planed Into the ice pavement. The slide is brilliantly Illuminated with electric lights.

The coasters and toboggans shoot down the slide at a very high speed. By, the time they reach the lake they are flying from 40 to 100 miles an hour! The sleds and toboggans are carried half way across the lake. They make the half mile run In from twenty to twenty-four seconds, the start and stop of course being slow.

The sport Is most exhilarating and In spite of I the terrific speed of the coaster sleds and toboggan the run is considered perfectly safe. Some of The sleds are large enough to carry four teen people. It Is probably the finest toboggan slide in the country and is proving a splendid midwinter attraction for Eagles mere."

Embley Shafer Chase was born in 1855, In Wilkes Barre Pennsylvania. He was a book keeper in Wilkes Barre in the 1880 census, but by 1896 [as mentioned in the above article] he was managing the cottages at a resort in Eagles Mere. According to his obituary in 1946, "Captain Chase first gained prominence as one of the detectives who helped round up the Molly Maguires... his title was gained in that experience."

Chase's entire obit is at the bottom of this post under read more, but this shorter blurb about his death also ran in the Williamsport Gazette and Bulletin:

The slide was ready for operation in January of 1904. The Sullivan newspaper reported:

"The toboggan slide, which afforded much amusement at Eagles Mere last winter, will be built again this year. A slide several hundred feet long is built of blocks of ice, ending at the edge of the frozen lake, and the tobogganers slide down the shute and are carried half way across the lake. The speed attained is said to be nearly a mile a minute.."

This postcard was mailed in 1988. The back reads:

Mailed from Bloomsburg to Bethlehem PA

"A tradition of winter threatens to slip away from Eagles Mere, Pa. By Carol Morello Inquirer Staff Writer EAGLES MERE, Pa.

- In winter, when the denizens of summer have fled back to the cities like so many migratory birds, the ice toboggan slide down Lake Avenue is Eagles Mere. There is precious little else to occupy the 150 year-round residents this lakeside resort village. Out of season, the dozen local gift shops are open only on weekends.

Even the nearest grocery is a 30-minute drive away. And so every winter weekend from mid-January on, Eagles Mere becomes a Norman Rockwell painting come alive. Rosy-cheeked children, bundled against the cold, squeal in delight as they zoom up to 45 m.p.h. down the 1,200-foot-long toboggan run, petering out in the middle of frozen Eagles Mere Lake. Teenagers line up for hot chocolate served from an old red trailer parked atop the hill.

Parents counsel patience to their eager offspring learning to wait their turn in line. Interrupted only by World War II and an occasional round of warm weather, the slick toboggan slide has been an annual tradition since 1904. But as the 1989 season draws to a close, some Eagles Mere residents are wondering how much longer they can keep up the tradition. As in small towns across America, Eagles Mere's young people are growing up and moving away. Each year, Eagles Mere's population grows grayer.

As it is now, it takes virtually every able-bodied resident to build the toboggan run and operate it for a few winter weekends to benefit the volunteer fire department. "I'm afraid it's a dying thing, because of the manpower problem," said Don Andrews, 40, the fire chief and full-time carpenter who directs construction of the slide. "We just don't have the people to volunteer. Coming out here every weekend takes a lot of time. And there aren't many young people left." Brian Smith is one.

He is 22, and a heavy equipment operator in Muncy, half an hour south of here. "There were 11 people in my high school graduating class, and only two of us are left," said Smith as he helped check toboggans in and out last weekend. "The rest have all moved a away." Like almost everything else in this quaint little town, a charming historical story accompanies the slide. town Developer as a E.S. resort, Chase, was who standing laid out the edge of the lake one January day in 1903 when his grandchildren asked him to build a "real good" toboggan run down the slope.

He went to the drawing board, and by the following winter was ready for the town's men and boys to build the slide. After cutting through the 12-inchthick lake ice with handsaws, they hauled the ice blocks up the hill with horse teams and laid them down in a row. A man by the name of Harry Stevens reportedly was the first to try it out - aboard an iron scoopshovel. According to local lore, Stevens went down with a trail of smoke coming from the seat of his burning pants. Good story.

Maybe there's even grain of truth to it. Maybe. "The history's a little vague," concedes Andrews. "A lot of pieces are lost, memories are lost. We get it by talking to the older people, then we pick the middle and go with it." Today, the sons, daughters and grandchildren of the original slidebuilders build the slide and the 55 toboggans, which are rented out at $8 an hour for a sled holding six adults and $10 an hour for an eight-seater.

When the ice on Eagles Mere Lake is at least 10 inches thick, volunteers measure blocks 15½ inches wide and 44 inches long. Gone are the hand saws, replaced by a special cutting machine with a circular saw attached to a motor on skis. Once cut, the ice blocks, weighing up to 250 pounds each, are floated to a belt leading to an elevator chute, which in turn carries them to the foot of the hill, where workers start laying them out. Snow is packed alongside the blocks to freeze them into place, and then grooves are cut down the length of the slide to hold the metal toboggan runners in place. It normally takes 380 man-hours to cut and maneuver the 880 to 1,000 ice blocks into place.

But if the method of construction has changed little throughout the century, there are touches of modernity to the scene that place it in the 1980s. Such as the proud parents capturing family memories on video cameras. Or the sweatshirts, T-shirts and hats emblazoned with "Eagles Mere Toboggan Slide," on sale for $15, $8 and $5 respectively. Or the ticket's liability waiver, which reads, in part: "The holder of this ticket understands that the Eagles Mere Toboggan Slide is a vigorous downhill ride at high speed ending in a slide across a frozen lake over which there is little or no control." Whether that warning provokes breathless anticipation or pangs of anxiety seems to be a function of age. "I like the speed," said Wes Tudor, 14, from Cherry Hill, as he waited in line last Sunday with a friend and their two fathers for a second trip down.

It was his first time aboard a toboggan. "It's scary while you do it," he admitted. "But at the bottom you're glad you did it, 'cause it's such an experience." Not so for the two adults in the party. "I like it when get to the bottom and everything's OK," acknowledged Jerry of Malvern, who was there with his 13-year-old son, Zach. But in Eagles Mere, the slide is more than just fun."

In the Harrisburg Telegraph, 1928:

"The men of Eagles Mere finished the ice cutting in a week. The ice houses are full and the toboggan slide has been completed. deal "The of work toboggan there slide took 468 a great as are of ice on the hill and it is 585 feet long. The slide we had last year was about 500 feet long. It is estimated that the toboggan on the runway will reach 125 miles per hour. This week sports were in full swing as there was good skating and the latter part of the week we had tobogganing. The toboggans and sleds go farther this year than last year as there is less snow covering the ice on the lake. Some of them go within fifty feet of the beach and it is great sport walking back on the slippery ice.".

According to the historical marker:

"Site of the original toboggan slide built in 1904 Designed and engineered by Cap. E.S. Chase.

Blocks of ice are measured, cut, and transported to the foot of Lake Ave where construction begins. The side, which is 1200 feet long, is grooved to fit the hand-crafts wooden toboggans.

Toda, E.M. Slide Association uses the original plans - modern equipment replaced the old horse teams, wagons, bob-sled and hand saws.

E.M. Civic Club, E.M. Slide Association 1976"

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