In several of the recent Transition columns, an attempt was made to trace the historical background of this community’s Municipal Park.
It was noted that voters of the community at a special reelection (it failed approval the first time) agreed to purchase the Santa Clara tract, which extended from below the foot of Cliff Ave. to the O.W.D. Corporation line between Racquette Pond and Demars Blvd. The purchase price was $5,000. Work began immediately to fill the low-lying ground and clear out the underbrush in the grove of trees below Mill St. and establishing the shoreline with log and stone ramparts. The total cost approached $136,000, with the town contributing $19,000 and the balance financed by a federal work program known as the W.P.A. Even at depression prices (1932) and wages (40 cents an hour for a 40-hour work week), this was a huge expenditure.
Project foreman for the park was John Hayes, and his crew of 30 men rushed to complete the necessary work. Public pressure was mounting to complete another phase of the project – a huge grandstand and baseball diamond.
The pressure stemmed from the fact that the start of the baseball season was only months away, and it was anticipated that this community would join the Northern New York – Vermont Baseball League.
Baseball fans had no need to worry. W.P.A. construction foreman, Jimmie King, had an impressive batting record (to borrow a baseball term) in completing other local W.P.A. projects.
The year before in 1936, with a crew of 32 men using carefully selected spruce and hemlock logs, Mr. King and crew had built the Rod and Gun Clubhouse. It was finished in June 1936 and remains to this day a highly attractive, well-constructed, one-of-a-kind activity center for the present-day’s energetic Rod and Gun Club.
The chinking between logs was barely in place on that building when in June of that year (1936), the W.P.A. approved still another project – a large clubhouse to accompany the Tupper Lake golf course, which had been built privately in 1933. (Note: Since the clubhouse was to be built with federal monies, for eligibility purposes it was necessary to turn the golf course property over to the town.) This arrangement has continued and has been attended with harmony and significant accomplishment as partners with the Tupper Lake Country Club.
The log clubhouse built with logs cut from the O.W.D.’s nearby Sugar Loaf Mountain was started in 1936 and finished in the fall of 1937, and was unique among golf course facilities found elsewhere. It was destroyed by fire in 1956.
Construction on the grandstand followed immediately. Construction headquarters were set up at the Tessier Lumber Co. railroad siding (now Ray’s Liquor Store and the White Birch Café), where Mr. King had been prudently stockpiling materials throughout the summer in advance of actual construction. It proved to be a difficult project.
Working through the winter some 131 foundation piers were set, often during extreme weather conditions. Compressed air-driven spades were used to cut through the top layer of soil. At a depth of four to five feet, a spongy layer of bark and decayed wood was encountered. This had to be removed. Nine to 10 feet down, workmen encountered heavy logs still in fair state of preservation, although from their depth having been there for centuries. These had to be cut through to reach a solid foundation base for piers. Readers familiar with the bitter cold winds of Racquette Pond can well appreciate the difficulties and discomfort involved. Despite those odds, the grandstand, baseball diamond, and $1,200 worth of chain link-fence (1,450 ft. long and 7 ft. in height) all were in place for the opening of the 1938 baseball season.
To a community weary from a long, bone-chilling, brutal winter, a stagnant economy that refused to recover, the struggle to keep food on the table and nerves jangled by the rumblings of war around the globe, the new grandstand must have seemed an apparition.
Rising Phoenix-like from the former mud flats of sawdust and bark chips, with its tier upon tier of seating escalating to 40-ft. vantage points, its water fountains, modern showers and locker rooms, underground dugouts, and the baseball diamond itself outlined with lime markings, there was nothing quite like it in the north country.
It was a time known as the “Threadbare Thirties,” with few recreational opportunities to escape even for a while the realities of a desperate time in our country’s history. Baseball provided one diversion, one pastime that everyone could afford and could enjoy, and Tupper Lake embraced it with great fervor.
Tupper would welcome the first appearance of its home team called The Rangers. They would tangle with manager Hank Hodge’s redoubtable Malone Stars. Both teams were made up largely of college baseball stars, and a high level of play was expected.
Following a large parade with bands playing and flags waving, which circled the field, a brief ceremony was held, and Mayor Frank McCarthy threw out the first ball to Mayor Ralph Cardinal of Malone, and the new baseball grandstand and the 1938 baseball season was officially opened and dedicated in high style.