The Chicago Gravel Company, the present own- 

 ers, bought the property in 1913. But the Plainfield En- 

 terprise reported in 1904 that "Steam shovels in the 

 gravel pit are doing business at the rate of about 200 

 carloads a day," so it seems that the site was bustling 

 before Chicago Gravel arrived. 



Sources also differ on exactly when the steam 

 shovels dug down deep enough to expose the springs that 

 provide the water that fills the lake. A local history pre- 

 pared for the Bicentennial Year in 1976 suggests 1915 as a 

 likely date. But the same history goes on to quote an item 

 that appeared in the Enterprise in February, 1914, report- 

 ing the existence of a large-scale ice harvesting opera- 

 tion at the site. Ice in the winter would seem to imply 

 water in the summer. 



Indeed, the ice harvesting may have had a larger 

 impact on the local economy than the gravel mining 

 operations. The Enterprise reports "manager Sid Gray" 

 starting up spring mining in March with a digging crew 

 of 15. In contrast, the ice harvesting, also under Mr. 

 Gray's direction, employed as many as 140 men, and 

 several teams of horses as well. 



As the manpower levels suggest, ice harvesting was 

 mostly a matter of muscle. Gangs of men sawed huge 

 blocks of ice from the lake. Teams of horses outfitted 

 with special shoes to give them traction hauled the 



blocks to the shore where men with pike poles guided 

 them onto a conveyor that hauled them uphill to a plan- 

 ing mill that sawed them into 24-inch cubes before more 

 men stacked them to the ceilings of storage rooms where 

 they would remain until summer. 



You would have to say that people in those days 

 knew how to get the good out of a gravel pit. Sand and 

 gravel from March to November, ice in the winter, and 

 in the balmy days of summer, swimming. The Enterprise 

 of June 11, 1914, reports the opening of an elaborate 

 facility complete with sand beach, bathhouses, bathing 

 suits for rent, and a high diving board. A long pier was 

 built out to a sand bar in the middle of the lake where the 

 water was only two or three feet deep. A floating rope 

 outlined the shallow spot for the protection of novices. 



Season tickets for these delights were $3 each. The 

 Enterprise pointed out that the money was for use of the 

 bathhouse. Swimmers could use the lake for free, but the 

 proprietors had "gone to large expense to create the con- 

 venience for safety, [and] the public will, no doubt, feel 

 generous toward them." 



Two points of historical interest can be derived 

 from this newspaper story. First, either the owner of the 

 bathhouse was a conman of almost mythic dimensions or 

 there was already water in the gravel pit in 1914, and 

 second, this may have been the first use of the term Lake 



Lake Renwick's ishnds, where hundreds of great blue herons, cattle egrets, great egrets, and black-crowned night herons make their home. 



12 



