Main Street, Rockport, circa 1898. Poole’s Drug Store is on the left, and Rockport’s first school house, circa 1790, is on the right. The team of horses in the background is most likely a wooden wedge-plow or a weighted wooden platform to compress the snow.
Don’t Plow Me In!
Good Morning Gloucester 
Great photo
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Nice! Wonder how they would have dealt with the snow of winter of 2015.
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Very interesting photo Fred. I imagine compressing the snow was the thing to do for sleighs and horse’s hooves. It looks like there are sled tracks in the snow.
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Fred 100% on! – You know your history here! Great history and shots here had a lot of quarry rocks to weight then down too 🙂 !! “The Cart men of a town or city would “break out” the roads. By traveling over them repeatedly, often in tandem, to level the drifts and compact the snow so it could support loaded sleighs and foot traffic. Any shoveling had to be done with Wooden shovels. Clearing walkways was entirely the resident’s responsibility. Had to ensure you had a lot of coal in those days or wood – stock the stove up at night or wake up cooler drafty days windows and doors…Getting out from all those blankets required some strength also 🙂 Dave & Kim 🙂
My Rockport how you have grown!!
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