The Guest Houses of North Creek
Ride Up - Slide Down
A History of Skiing at Gore Mountain
Chapter 10
Chapter 10
By Dr. Dan O'Keeffe and Mary C. Moro
As Told to Toni Anderson-Somme
As previously mentioned, the infiltration of skiers to Gore Mountain from the city created a whole new set of problems.
We were a small community where everyone knew his neighbor. On most weekends, however, the "outsiders" outnumbered the "insiders" by an unimaginable margin. Those snow trains brought hundreds - No! Thousands of visitors - into our town and because there were neither sufficient hotel rooms nor restaurants to handle the number of guests, they stayed and ate in the houses of local families.
Although several of the more famous visitors managed to acquire a room at one of the hotels in town - for example, Lowell Thomas did one of his famous broadcasts from the American Hotel - many more were just as willing to see how the "other half' - the local half - lived, and eagerly boarded for the weekend within the homes of members of our community.
An article published in The North Creek News-Enterprise entitled "North Creek In The Thirties" tells one visitor's story:
On March 15th, 1933, Mrs. Nan Perreau went to the train station to meet Lois Perret of whom she had never met. The landlady and boarder had arranged for a 10 day stay...
Lois Perret Schaefer remembers her visit well...
She [Mrs. Perreau] and I hit it off right from the start. I was not underfoot, as much as skiing up the street and onto the open slopes. But at mealtimes I didn't miss much.
Mrs. Perreau was a wonderful provider of delicious food.
It was a beautiful vacation with plenty of skiing as well as fun with her daughter's family next door, and another daughter, Blanche Alexander, my movie companion.
Mostly the weather was great. One day I went out to Bakers Mills and up Edwards Hill to visit the folks I had come to know summer times at the Schaefer's camp. It was a lovely schuss down from the top! Or on an icy day, Jimmy and Trudy Yandon, Mrs. Perreau's grandchildren and I sat on the floor doing jigsaw puzzles and playing games.
As the second weekend rolled around, my friends from Schenectady began to gather about to ski with me in the ski bowl as well as through the fields, and woods and down The Pete Gay Trail off Gore. Since Ken Bennett and his trail crew and Vince Schaefer had cleared this trail we knew it well. It was a fitting climax to the beautiful ten days I had (there).
In subsequent years, Lois Perret along with other skiers from the Schenectady region would return to Mrs. Perreau's makeshift Bed & Breakfast. She had an established reputation for warm hospitality, wonderful food and comfortable beds that had spread quickly.
Just as those visiting the area for a weekend of winter sports enjoyed regaling us with memories of staying at guest houses in the area, the locals were just as anxious to recount their own special memories of ski visitors.
Mary Lou Cole remembers her grandmother's account of the exciting weekend of January 25, 1936. She says her grandmother had twelve newspapermen, photographers and a model who was married to one of the photographers, all staying in her home. A well-known sports writer of the day, Jimmy A
Powers from The Daily News, and his photographer, Stanley Brown, were among that group. The following is taken from an article written by Jimmy Powers, which appeared in the Sunday Daily News on January 26, 1936. I'm including so much of it because it painted a rather idyllic setting. In truth, it painted North Creek and the adventure of skiing on Gore Mountain exactly as it was at that time. Is it any wonder, based on the following account, that so many people herded to our town to experience such a wholesome, happy winter retreat? Here is how Jimmy Powers saw it:
North Creek, NY, January 25, 1936:
"A bright sun, knee-deep blanket of powdery drifts and a thermometer that registered exactly zero greeted Photographer Stan Brown and me as we piled out of our snow train early this morning. It was our first trip to this miniature St. Moritz and it was something of a new experience for many of the three hundred New Yorkers who tumbled out of their Pullman to find the village chimneys smoking and clean white clouds over Gore Mountain.
"Leave your skis and snowshoes at this end of the platform and look for the bus bearing your number," shouted C. L. Topping, a brisk gent in a navy blue parka.
Topping is the town's Grover Whalen. It is his job to see that skiers to the number of 3,000 or more are bedded down in a town that has only a population of 600. [He was also principal of the school and a member of the ski club.] Every spare bedroom is numbered and outlying farmhouses are pressed into service. Stan and I drew house number 11 which belongs to John Cole, a rugged ex-lumberman whose white house stands on a beautiful pine ridge one mile from the depot.
Oil lamps, Currier & Ives prints, a beagle puppy, and the faint mooing of Betsy, the family Jersey cow, were refreshing sights and sounds to our city eyes and ears.
Ten other skiers were assigned to the Cole farmhouse and soon all were sitting about the breakfast table eating vast quantities of griddle cakes, maple syrup, sausage and hot hiscuits.
Three delicious meals and a feather bed for the night were to cost us $3.00 each, we discovered. Our round trip railroad ticket, including a lower berth, cost us $10.50 each.
Breakfast over, we pulled on every sweater and sock we owned and walked out to find our skis and poles awaiting us. These cost $1.50 a day rental. The baggage car on the train carried 500 pairs of skis, 300 pairs of boots, dozens of varieties of wax and assorted incidentals.
"The Pete Gay Trail is best for intermediates," Carl Schaefer [sic], head of local ski, told us.
A ten mile ride up to the top of the mountain in the bus cost us 25 cents, and we got out to find ourselves in a winter fairyland. Each cedar, spruce and balsam sagged under a mantle of snow. The sun was bright and far down the valley, distant farms and fields of virgin white were crystal clear in the rare air. Our elevation was 3,000 feet.
We found the trails wide and safe and the snow fast.
"Too many beginners take slopes too steep for their skill," said Mort Amundsen, our Norwegian guide. "Now we caution everyone not to overmatch themselves. Last weekend we accommodated 3,400 fans, men, women and little daredevil children and our one casualty was a broken ankle. These slopes are the best in the state. Come over and I'll show you the American version of the Swiss funicular railroad."
We slid down to a valley where an anchored automobile, vintage 1926, chugged away pulling a continuous ropeslide up a 300 foot hill. Skiers grabbed the constantly moving rope and were whisked to the top. Ten tickets sold for twenty-five cents.
On the other side of the ridge was a toboggan slide which sent its cargos of screaming girls sliding across the surface of North Creek. The creek empties into the Hudson River which is a solid chunk of ice up here.
The skiers on our train were comprised of men and women of all ages and occupations. In our Pullman last night, we heard conversations in French, German and Norwegian. Everyone, it seems, has rosy cheeks and clear They all talked about what their pet formula for skiing was, and the difficulty of shifting body weight to make Christina, Telemark and Stem Turns." Housing skiers in private homes continued for many years.
Helen Cornwall graciously gave the following personal account detailing when their family opened up their home to the "winter tourists." You can see from the following report, that "give and it shall be given unto you" was a truth many of our hometown families learned from this experience.
In the 1950's...Farrell's Hotel called me one evening asking if I could take four people over the weekend because they were filled. I agreed and that evening these folks arrived in a blinding snowstorm. They made it to our front yard, became stuck in the snow and stayed stuck until the next day. They were very nice people, two New York physicians and their wives. That week-end was the beginning of a beautiful friendship which still exists today.
One of the next calls I had asked if I could accommodate six people from the United Nations. I wondered for a moment, then thought, "Well, they are only people!" and I agreed to take them. That weekend when they arrived, it was a very friendly group. However, as I was to find, only one person spoke English. His name was Vladimir Fabre, called Vlado by everyone.
It wasn't long before we felt that Vlado was special and was becoming part of our family. He was the one who always came downstairs to fill glasses with juice then took the tray upstairs to awaken his friends. He made reservations and when their stay was over, he helped each one pay their bill. Evenings were spent in our living room as they enjoyed the fire, our girls - Judy and Nancy
- the dog, and family stories interpreted by Vlado. It was a humbling experience when we learned that he was Dag Hammarskjolds' (then Secretary General of the United Nations) personal attorney.
Just before Christmas he called asking if he could come bringing two friends, a mother and daughter. I agreed and went about making plans for extra people over the holiday. They arrived rather late on Christmas Eve and the two ladies seemed extra happy being welcomed into a strange home. After showing them to their rooms, Vlado returned to our living room to tell us a sad story. These two ladies had been victims of horrible atrocities of that time. They had actually crawled on their bellies at night and made it to Switzerland and safety.
He then asked if he could put some things under the Christmas tree and join us on Christmas morning! Could you have said no? Of course not!
Everyone was up bright and early on Christmas morning. As we waited for Judy and Nancy to open their first gifts and Speaksie (our dog) to open his wrapped box of biscuits, it was easy to see the peace on the faces of Vlado's friends.
Then it was Vlado's turn! He passed gifts to his friends and then handed a gift to each one of us. This was a total surprise! I still have the lovely little wooden box which he gave me and the embossed leather cigarette case he gave John. John never used it for cigarettes - just enjoyed showing it to people.
After breakfast Vlado took his friends to Lake Placid. When they returned they described their day as a Second Heaven - so much like home. Needless to say, that Christmas will never be forgotten. Later on, Nancy was asked to write a paper. She recalled this holiday and used the title "The Happiest Christmas."
The seasons passed quickly as we looked forward to another ski season with Vlado and his U.N. friends.
Unfortunately, one day in September we were shocked and very sad to receive word from his sister, Olga, that Vlado had died on Dag Hammarskjold's plane when they went down as they were on a peace mission to Katanga in the Congo.
At a later time, Olga sent me a copy of his beautiful funeral service, which was held in Switzerland.
Not only was Vlado's death a great loss to his country and the U.N., but to us as well. We had shared the life of this wonderful man.
A NCNE article in the Arthur Draper collection reported that one guest from New York, "John G. Contat, an assistant manager of the Waldorf Astoria, was surprised to walk in to one ski home and see much of the furniture and linen had come from his own hotel!
Explanation...It was bought at a sale when the old Waldorf was torn down!
The following few pages show some of the local newspaper ads for our North Creek hotels, inns and eating establishments.
Take a moment to peruse them and note the exorbitant prices of the rooms!
"Regular Rates from $3.50 Daily" and " Rates with Meals from $4.00" make it abundantly clear that those really were the good old days!