Harbor just off ferry wharf becomes prime sledding spot; behind the sledder, a car-carrying barge is iced in at slip. Gazette Archives

Thursday, February 11, 2016

It was the kind of winter that is talked about for generations, the winter of 1933 -1934. Ice caked and silenced bells and covered the spars and riggings of fishing boats. It was so cold that steamboats were iced in and schools were cancelled, and seagulls searched for food at backyard bird feeders.

Friday, Feb. 9 was 16 degrees below zero, S. Bailey Norton wrote in a journal. After days of sub-zero temperatures, the Edgartown Harbor froze over, making it possible to walk from Edgartown to Chappaquiddick. On Feb. 10, the ice was so thick that Gazette co-editor Henry Beetle Hough and Gazette linotype editor and pressman Bill Roberts walked across Edgartown outer harbor, from the Edgartown lighthouse to Cape Pogue Pond, and back.

“Within sight of [Edgartown Memorial Wharf] we had our heart's desire that day, and I have thought of it often since,” Mr. Hough wrote. “How over the blue, deep, shining strait where the steamboats used to run and where the tall yachts sail, we walked one February morning.”

 

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