Welcome to Wayback Wednesday sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab! Every week, we’ll be sharing a vintage photo and asking our readers to chime in with anything you can recall about the photo, other related memories, or even a funny caption. Have some vintage photos of your own? Send them to [email protected] and we may share them with our readers!
This week, snow removal is a perennial chore on Huntsville’s Main Street. Can you guess the decade when this photo was taken? What do you notice that was different about Main Street then? (Photo: Muskoka Heritage Place Collection)
Wayback Wednesday is sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab
Last week we shared this photo with you:
Many of you correctly guessed that this 1920s skating photo was taken at the station wharf in Hunters Bay.
If you want to see more Wayback Wednesday photos, click here.
Wendy Brown says
Street lights, parking meters and Main Street was called Highway 11B. I would guess early 1960 ‘s.
Brian Tapley says
Wendy is right! The street lights are simpler, cleaner design and may even have worked better. Regardless they look like 60’s, early 60’s material.
The truck is not some tandem or tri-axle monster and it is probably gasoline powered and that tractor looks like the one I have to use still because i don’t have the budget municipalities have for tractors and trucks.
The Empire hotel is still a major landmark!
One thing I do remember from the 60’s was that they used to remove one section of railing from the main street bridge and the trucks would back up to that spot and dump the snow directly into the river, snow, ice, sand and dog poop… it all went straight in but it never seemed to hurt anything. I’m not sure where they dump it now.
The main street bridge had an open grill work deck at that time and somehow they had it set up as a three lane bridge to allow left turns down beside the river toward what is now Boston Pizza. The grill was good in some ways as the snow just fell through it but on some mornings it would be covered with ice and very slippery and if you rode a small motorcycle it could “walk” sideways at an alarming rate depending on your tires. Best not to put a bike on it’s side on the grill work… the results were always bad.
Jim Boyes says
Brian,
What the Devil were you doing riding in late Nov or Dec on a small motorcycle in Muskoka! !?? I know……no money and cheap transportation. I did the same stuff and survived. I think the truck in the pic will be a late 40’s Dodge or Fargo. Those were the great days when men were men and women were proud and independent. We all toughed it out and grew into our lives.
Great memories.
Jim Boyes