From the Vineyard Gazette editions of December 1958:

The prolonged cold snap which the Vineyard has experienced for virtually two weeks without a thaw has caused the older inhabitants to rack their memories for some recollection of a similar spell of weather early in the winter of 1925-26. In 1925, the cold came early. The late Harry L. Peakes had just completed a system of new icehouses on Old House Pond, replacing others which had burned to the ground some months before. He filled these icehouses that winter. Icehouses were also filled in Oak Bluffs and Edgartown.

It was in that winter of 1925 that a large fleet of iceboats, hurriedly built for the occasion, was launched on Lake Tashmoo. Various of these craft were elaborate and expensive. The late Dr. Orland S. Mayhew, William E. Dugan, Frank Bodfish, Frank Swift, the late Charles M. Vincent, Benjamin C. Crowell and Rodney Cleveland and others, had iceboats on the pond at the time. The iceboating season was long-lasting and perfect.

In late December, 1933, the Island towns experienced temperatures of zero and even below, and scallop boats were frozen in at Quitsa. This was only an indication of what was to come, however.

On the morning of Feb. 9, 1934, a temperature of 15 below zero was recorded on Oak Bluffs wharf, 11 below at the Vineyard Haven post office, 12 below at Gay Head, and so on. Edgartown harbor was frozen over so that for the first time since 1917 it was possible to walk to Chappaquiddick. Richard L. Pease employed fifty men to harvest ice at Oak Bluffs, and Harry Peaks had a similar crew which put in 400 tons on the first day. The steamer Nantucket was frozen in at Nantucket, and iceboats were racing on Chilmark Pond and Tashmoo in the weeks that followed.

This was the month when the late Dr. R. F. Merchant of Vineyard Haven walked between half a mile and three quarters of a mile across the ice of the harbor to attend the captain of an oil barge.

This was the time, also, when two of the Gazette staff walked from Edgartown steamboat wharf to Cape Pogue across solid ice all the way. Not since 1904 had this been accomplished.

With the memorable winter of 1933-34 began a series of severe, icy winter seasons in which all kinds of unusual experiences were reported. In February, 1936, a woman passenger boarded the steamboat at Woods Hole on a Saturday, with a ticket for Nantucket. The boat could not get through because of the ice, and before she finally completed her trip this passenger had traveled some 220 miles for her fare of $1.75, and had slept on board the steamer three nights.

In that month it was reported that there was more ice than in any other winter since the famous one of 1918 when the Cross Rip lightship was carried away. The Fall River steamers docked at Newport because Fall River was frozen solid, and Buzzards Bay was virtually closed to navigation. There were no such low temperatures as in 1934, but the cold was sustained, and from the Methodist Church tower in Edgartown it was possible to see the water only in the distance.

This was another winter of iceboating at Tashmoo.

Cold spells have been experienced in some mere recent winters, but nothing to compare with the frigidity of 1934, 1935, and 1936.

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If a Vineyard tradition which dates back at least as far as Allan Keniston’s grandmother’s era is still in force, the Vineyard is in for a whale of a winter. How he knows? That’s easy. His grandmother, who was born at Lambert’s Cove, where he now lives, always said that when Uncle Seth’s Pond and the ponds in the woods roundabout, were very high in the fall, look out for old man winter. And high they were this fall, and indeed still are.

Mr. Keniston has seen this theory proved in his own day. He recalls that in one of the first winters after he moved back to the Island — and records show this must have been 1933-1934 — the Vineyard experienced one of those winters. He has no trouble at all in remembering it, and you will soon see why.

That was the winter when the Vineyard Haven harbor froze over for a period of a week, and the crew from a vessel frozen in there, walked in over the ice for supplies, for a month or more. Vineyard Sound was iced over so far out that you couldn’t see the water. Mr. Keniston has a picture of his son Gifford, a small boy then, standing far out on the ice.

That was also the winter when Uncle Seth’s overflowed, and ran across the road by Frank B. Sanford’s mail box, nearby the present Keniston home, in a stream ten or twelve feet wide. It was the same year, as Mr. Keniston recalls it, that “a freshet” caused a washout when it surged through Priester’s brook.

As to this year, Uncle Seth’s was again very high indeed, in fact it would have needed only a couple more inches to send its overflow across the road again. It is still extremely high and so are the other woodland ponds in the vicinity.

Time will soon tell whether a weather warning of old still carries its same weight.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com