JED REINERT | Digital Staff
Editor's note: Originally published in March 2023.
Given how extraordinarily mild this winter has been, you might find yourself wishing we had gotten at least one significant snowfall.
Or you might simply be glad it wasn't brutally cold for three months straight.
Regardless of how you feel about them, you surely remember colder winters, and you may well recall times when the Susquehanna River froze over.
But did you know that long ago, those river freezes were so hard that people would walk, skate and ride horse-drawn sleighs on the ice? And did you know that, on some occasions, brave souls even drove cars across the frozen river?
Here's a look back to colder winters, and what life along the icy Susquehanna was like in bygone days.
![How to make peppermint patties, poached clementines for holiday gifting [recipes]](https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/lancasteronline.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/6/be/6be7d7a6-62b0-11ec-a554-8389e4ece3cb/61c25a88adaf5.image.jpg?resize=1662%2C1247)
Freezing over
This photo from Jan. 9, 1928, shows the ice-locked Susquehanna River as it was beginning to thaw. The view is from a point near Washington Boro.
As LNP history columnist Jack "The Scribbler" Brubaker wrote in 1994, "Ice seems to have formed more regularly on the river in the 18th and 19th centuries than in recent decades." Indeed, newspaper records are packed with references to the river freezing over from shore to shore in the 1800s - and even in the early decades of the 20th century.
For example, in 1885, the Lancaster Examiner reported that the river south of Lancaster County - between Port Deposit and Havre de Grace, Maryland - was ice-locked for a longer period than in any other winter on record.
Newspapers reported the river freezing from shore to shore at Marietta as early as the first week of December in 1901. Similar reports came from Columbia in 1909 and Bainbridge in 1914.
The freezing and thawing of the Susquehanna was an annual ritual that was tracked like any other weather phenomenon - here's an Examiner story from 1915 that lists the dates the river became icebound and the dates it thawed for each of the previous 45 years.
This photo from Jan 21, 1964, shows an ice jam on the Susquehanna River breaking up at Columbia.
When those thaws occurred, "ice jams" were a frequent danger, clogging the river with massive chucks of breaking ice and often leading to flooding that sometimes destroyed homes and other buildings near the river.
And in the days before refrigerators, river ice was put to practical use.
Farmers, idle during the months that their fields lay fallow, viewed the river ice as a harvestable crop. "Ice farming" on the Susquehanna helped lead Pennsylvania to rank third in the nation for ice production in the 19th century, behind only New York and Maine.
Farmers would use horse-drawn plows to clear the ice, then cut it into mini-icebergs that they would float downstream to icehouses on the shore.
Crossing the ice
James Allen uses a tree branch as a probe as he cautiously walks the Susquehanna River ice near Washington Boro in this photo from January 1988.
It wasn't just ice harvesters who braved the frozen Susquehanna. Plenty of Lancaster County residents made their way onto the frozen river on foot or by other means of transportation.
Ice skating on the river was quite popular - here's a reference from 1890 to a group of young men and boys from Columbia skating on ice that was "about thick enough to make the sport venturesome." One skater, Harry Hartman, fell through the ice but was pulled out by a friend.
The skating was "especially good" at Pequea in 1910, and some winters saw skaters take to the ice even in later decades - at Washington Boro in 1942, for example.
Over the years, countless people ventured onto the frozen river for a reason that was neither recreation nor ice harvesting - simply to get to the other side.
The newspaper archives contain dozens of references to people walking across the frozen Susquehanna. Here's one from 1912 about people crossing the river at Harrisburg. And another from 1918, when people walked across at Marietta. And in 1935, people crossed at various points near Columbia.
Horse-drawn sleighs were common on the river in the 19th and early 20th centuries as well.
In 1903, Henry Leitheiser of Columbia won bragging rights as the first person to cross the river by sleigh that winter. But the following year, his attempt to repeat the performance was less successful - his sleigh broke through the ice near the York side of the river.
Fortunately, he was able to unhitch the horse, and both Leitheiser and the animal made it to shore safely.
On especially cold winters, ice on the river would freeze to a depth of several feet, allowing for heavier transport - such as this instance from 1914, when a two-horse team pulled a load of wood across the frozen river.
Two years later, the News-Journal reported on the funeral of Isabel Sterner of Lancaster, who would be buried in York County after her casket - and the entire funeral party - was carried across the ice by horse-drawn sleighs.
While teams of horses and fully loaded sleighs are certainly not light, one can't help but wonder - just how heavy a load could the ice hold?
Frozen plains, trains and automobiles
This photo from Jan. 4, 1977, shows several people walking on the frozen Susquehanna River near Pequea. Also visible is a dune buggy which had been driven out onto the ice.
The answer to that question, apparently, is "the weight of a freight train."
Though the event wasn't covered in Lancaster newspapers, in 1852, the ice between Perryville and Havre de Grace, Maryland, was so thick that railroad workers laid track directly on it and hauled passengers and freight back and forth.
At that time, railroad cars crossed the Susquehanna by barge during warmer months. When the river became impassable, the "ice railroad" option was put into place. Between Jan. 15 and Feb. 24 of that year, a total of 10,000 tons of freight, baggage and mail was moved across the ice in 1,378 cars.
The project was notable enough that a lithograph of the scene was commissioned, which was reprinted in numerous publications.
A similar setup was built at the same location in 1889. And while Lancaster County never saw railroad cars on the frozen river, such a plan was considered in 1896, when Columbia and Wrightsville, less than a mile apart, were effectively separated by 70 miles if one was traveling by rail, because trains had to journey to Harrisburg to cross the Susquehanna.
As the automobile became a more common sight on Lancaster County roads, it was perhaps inevitable that someone would try driving one across the river.
This happened for the first time on Feb. 18, 1912, according to the New Era.
Contractor Joseph Brenneman, his brother, Dr. P.P. Brenneman, and J.S. Wertz made the crossing together, making the round trip to York County and back in about six minutes. Their speed on the ice ranged from 25 to 35 miles per hour.
Upon accomplishing the historic feat, Brenneman promptly loaded up his car with another group of passengers, including his wife and son, for a second run.
Ice thick enough to support the weight of a car wasn't an annual occurrence, but it did happen from time to time over the following decades.
For example, in 1936, when the ice measured three feet thick at points, newspaper articles refer to cars, motorcycles and pedestrians crossing the river, and areas of the ice being cleared of snow to form impromptu skating rinks. That year, the freeze was described as stretching "from the Chesapeake Bay to the sources" of the Susquehanna.
The next year, the ice wasn't nearly so thick - but it was thick enough for M. Luther Peters Jr. of Washington Boro to ride a bicycle across to Long Level and back, thereby getting a mention on the front page of the New Era on Dec. 15, 1937.
A few years later, on Feb. 4, 1940, Mrs. Alfred Smallwood drove across in her 1939 Plymouth, starting from a point near Holtwood. Her mother and sister accompanied her, and in later years she said the experience was one she would never forget.
Warming trend
This aerial photo from February 1977 shows the ice-covered Susquehanna River, top right, where it intersects with Pequea Creek.
As early as 1920, references appeared in the newspapers to winters being milder than they used to be, and river freezes being less severe.
For example, here's a column from March 11, 1920, in which such assertions are made by some "old-timers" who remember the winters of the 19th century.
An article from 1950 states that the river could be "walked from shore to shore" in late December, but it had been several years since the last time that was the case.
While hard freezes of the river appeared to be much less frequent in the latter half of the 20th century, they still happened - ice skaters took to the river in 1960, for example.
And in 1977, the ice was thick enough not only for walking and winter sports, but also driving, as some brave soul ventured onto the ice in a dune buggy near Pequea.
An old-fashioned hard, smooth freeze wasn't necessary for winter sports on the river, though. Mountain climber Paul Nicolozzo of Manheim decided to venture across the jagged ice jam that had formed in March 1978 near Pequea.
Koogle, a dog belonging to mountain climber Paul Nicolozzo, is seen in this photo from March 1978, when the pair ventured across the ice jam on the Susquehanna River.
He brought his dog, Koogle, along on the trip, and the pair navigated mountains of ice between 20 and 30 feet tall, as well as passages of flowing water where they had to jump from one ice floe to another. The experiment was a success, though Nicolozzo had to rescue Koogle from the chilly water at one point.
Local newspapers ran photos of people gingerly walking on the frozen Susquehanna in 1981 and 1988, but it wasn't until 1994 that the coldest winter on record led to ice thick enough for more enthusiastic activity.
Temperatures dropped well below zero that January, and the New Era reported that the river was frozen shore to shore from the Conowingo Power Station to Havre de Grace, Maryland, for the first time in many years. Many people ventured onto the ice, and some even crossed the river on snowmobiles.
The old-timers of the 1920s were right - winters in the Northeast have, by and large, been warmer than they once were. But there's another reason why we no longer see people careening across the frozen Susquehanna in cars.
Even when the river has frozen shore-to-shore in recent years - such as 2015, which saw the area's second-coldest February on record - it's more dangerous to go out on the ice than it used to be.
The ice simply isn't as reliable as it was in days of old, in part because the Safe Harbor Dam, which began operation in 1931, alters the flow of water under the ice, which means voids can form under the icy crust.
Of course, even in long-ago days, the ice would sometimes break under people or animals crossing the river. Perhaps the most tragic of these incidents occurred in February 1780 when, after a wedding in Columbia, the wedding party of 40 people crossed the river to York County by horse-drawn sleighs. The ice broke, and 36 of the 40 drowned in the frigid waters - among them the newlyweds.
In light of that grim event, if you do ever see a shore-to-shore freeze of the Susquehanna River, enjoy the sight from the shoreline - especially if you're in a car.
ERIN NEGLEY | Staff Writer
JENELLE JANCI | Staff Writer
