Potsdam Raquette River Walk

Until electric refrigeration became widespread in the 1930s, Potsdam villagers relied on iceboxes stocked with ice blocks cut from the Raquette River and stored under sawdust in icehouses along Water Street, now Riverview Drive. Two-man teams using gasoline-powered circular saws cut the ice and hauled it to the icehouses with derricks, pulleys, and tongs. The river’s brown water comes not from mud, iron, or pollution, but from tannin leached by rainwater from the roots of trees, especially hemlocks, into the river. That same tannin was extracted from hemlock bark to tan animal skins for leather in the many tanneries that operated along the river in the 19th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, a concrete retaining wall topped with pillars and rings for mooring boats defined the character of Ives Park’s shoreline, where the Smith family operated a boathouse and rented boats to fishermen, picnickers, sightseers, and courting couples. The park was enlarged in the 1970s when buildings along Water Street were torn down.

Potsdam, New York · United States