McLEAN COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY NEWS
By Euleen Rickard
With the snow, ice, and cold weather of the week of December 4th we were reminded of the big freeze of 1939-1940. At Christmas time in 1939 the weather turned bad and there was snow, ice and below freezing temperature continuing into 1940. The coldest was eighteen degrees below zero.
Green River known as the “deepest for it’s width” had not frozen over since the winter of 1917-1918. As the many days of sub-zero temperatures continued, ice began forming in the river and on January 27th ice on the river ranged from two to more than six inches deep.
In 1939 construction had begun on a bridge to replace the Eck Fulkerson ferry that had been the only means for crossing the river at Livermore. The cold did not stop that work. The steelworkers continued to raise steel and drive rivets and the bridge was half way across from the south when the river thawed. Oscar Rector, who worked on the bridge, in his older days said, “It was as cold as I ever got in my life.”
The ferry could not operate for weeks and cars from Island and the south were going to Rumsey where they crossed the Gresham Memorial Bridge over the river to get to Owensboro and other points in the north.
Although the frozen river made it inconvenient for travel and work it provided some fun. People walked, skated and played on the river day and night. Many skated up and down the river from Calhoun to Livermore and from Livermore back to Calhoun, a ten-mile trip. The frozen river was such a phenomenon, even schools were dismissed to allow children to skate on it.
Noble Ayer landed his small plane on the river at Calhoun. Oscar Rector told of seeing the plane land and said, “two people got out, put on skates and joined a group of skaters. They skated briefly, then removed their skates, got in their plane and took off. I never knew who they were or where they came from.” Livermore native Burrell Herndon, who was twenty-two years old at the time, drove his 1935 Ford with six passengers out on the ice where a cameraman caught them. The picture was published in the Messenger/Inquirer.
1939-1940 was a winter to remember. There were fourteen snows, a total of twenty inches and it wasn’t until heavy rains came in March that the last of the ice in the river broke up and was carried away by rising waters.
Information for this article was taken from newspapers of the time, Oscar Rector and my personal experience of “Skating on the Green.”