The snow storm of today brings out the gasoline powered, winter tired snowplow, complete with flashing lights, radio and a heated cab. Clattering and banging over the highways, the plows spray driveways shut, but clear the roads for traffic. Back when horse-powered sleds and sleighs were the primary mode of transportation, however, it was a different story.
Snow rollers were used to pack down the snow on the traveled roads. The noises heard might be the squeak and crunch of the roller or the jingle of bells on the horses. There was no cab atop a snow roller; just two men bundled up like Eskimos in fur coats and blankets. Wherever possible, driveways and dooryards would be packed by the snow roller.
2012.06.1897 Snow roller in Danville - Harold E. Hatch Collection
Many years ago, I was fortunate to interview Warren Farrington of East Peacham regarding his snow rolling days in Peacham prior to World War I. Peacham’s rollers were double rollers, one right beside the other with a pole running between the rollers and extending out as far as the first team of horses. Warren’s description of the rollers, “I think most were made of spruce or hemlock, very thick plank – three or four inches thick because they got some pretty rough treatment.” At the back of the roller, in the middle, was a box of which Warren explained its use: “This box on the back here, we used to put a few rocks in there – not so much to make the roller heavier, but to take the weight off the horse’s neck from this pole bearing down.” The seat for the men, usually two of them, was ahead of center atop the roller. There was a box area in back of the seat that carried shovels, sometimes an axe and dinner pails, etc. Warren pointed these things out on a wooden model of a snow roller, an example of which can be seen at the St. Johnsbury History & Heritage Center.
The rollers were owned by the town, but the horses belonged to the individual farmers. Often times, there was call for a three-team hookup, the horses closest to the roller were called the pole horses, the middle team referred to as the swing team, and the team at the front were the leaders; both the swing and leader teams were free of the pole.
Warren’s recollection of a typical day was starting by seven or eight o’clock in the morning; they were paid by the hour, which at that time was probably 60 cents for a man and team! They never went out for two, three or four inches of snow because that amount of snow did not impede travel with a horse or sled the way it does with a car! The route Warren was sent over the most was Cow Hill into East Cabot to Route Two which usually got him home an hour or two after dark.
The roller made a road that was from 12 to 14 feet wide, “it was supposed to be so two teams could pass by crowding out into the snow a bit.” The return trip was easier because of the packed snow. There were usually two men for safety’s sake and as Warren said, “for a change-off because your arms could get rather tired holding six horses all long.”
With temperatures sometimes dropping well below zero, Warren recalled how they kept warm, “Our horse blankets we used to put part of them over the seats, set on them and put part of the blankets over us and quite often, if the weather was real bitter, we’d have a lighted kerosene closed in with the blankets around it. It would give off an amazing amount of heat and kept our feet and legs warm.” I, to this day, remember the twinkle in his eye when he suggested that maybe the lighted lantern wasn’t the safest idea!! As for the hands, Warren told of “mittens almost ‘ specially made to keep your hands warm when you were pulling on the reins. They were double with sometimes a thin insulation between the two layers.” A fur coat was almost a necessity – “You couldn’t put on clothes enough to face a 20 below zero wind on top of that roller and keep warm with anything less than a fur coat, I had an old coonskin coat I always wore on the snow roller.”
2022.80.15 Snow roller in North Danville village - Elgin Gates glass plate negative collection - Danville Historical Society (courtesy of John Myrick from the Tennie Gaskill Toussaint collection)
Routes had homes where they could go in and eat their lunch. The horses were blanketed and fed grain at these stops too. I mentioned that they often rolled folks dooryards if they could. Warren recalled, “turning six horses in a dooryard where your leaders would turn and come right back by the roller in order to turn it around.” Sometimes they would stop in a schoolyard and one Peacham student, Thelma White, remembered being lifted up on that seat and feeling as if you were ‘King of the Mountain.’
Cars eventually won out and the plow was born. If your fascination has been tapped, then again Peacham is the place to go. They have a restored snow roller barn, probably the only one in Vermont, if not the country and it is filled with different rollers thanks to the passion of Richard Hovey.
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