Several Icon viewers offer their own Buckeye, Riley Creek and National Quarry experiences while growing up. The responses followed the Bluffton Public Library presentation by Fred Steiner titled "You'll never believe what's at the bottom of the Buckeye."
Can you add a story of your own? Send it to: [email protected]
Click here to watch the presentation.
Here are some additional view comments:
Jan Emmert
My mother, Esther (Niswander) Emmert, told us that her major swimming event in her youth was swimming across the National Quarry. I vaguely recall her pointing out once how she had done so, lengthwise, between the Jefferson Street side and the north side near the old light plant.
Since she was born in 1920, I imagine that would have been in the early 1930s. I believe she was with one or both of her older sisters, Eleanor or Lucille, who I understood to both be strong swimmers.
I don't remember other details. For example, I don't remember if she ever said swimming was regularly permitted in the National, or if it was done with some type of school group.
I do not ever recall her talking about swimming any place else in Bluffton as a child, such as in the Buckeye, or the place you described in Riley Creek near the current Steinmetz soccer field.
I vaguely recall seeing the floating frame swimming pool in the Buckeye in my early childhood, but I never swam there. Since we lived in the country and had our own pond (the Emmert-Hilty pond on Lugabill Road), we could swim to our heart's content without paying anything.
I never took the swimming test you described. However, probably in 1957 or 1958, I took Red Cross lifeguard training, at the Buckeye. I recall that the small round small kids pool was already built, and our lifeguard training and exam was partly in the new swimming pool and partly in the Buckeye itself.
Subsequently I was part-time assistant life guard one summer at Camp Friedenswald in Michigan (when Ben Sprunger was the main life guard) and part-time dishwasher.
You mentioned the Ice Plant, which I also vaguely recall. Until I was six (1948), we lived on North Jackson Street. I recall going to the Ice Plant with my father one summer, and him getting a big block of ice in his car which were lifted with big ice tongs.
As I recall, the ice building was located roughly across from the current Chinese Restaurant, probably beside the Pure Gas Station, and later Hauenstein Plumbing, and currently a driver training office.
As you said, the ice would be cut from the Buckeye (or it could have been also from the National) and would be insulated with sawdust to keep for sale in the summer.
I can't imagine why our then small family would have needed such big blocks of ice, unless it was for a summer reunion of my Niswander cousins who would come each summer to stay for a week with our grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. Waldo Niswander, at the corner of South Jackson and Franklin streets.
Kenneth Zimmerman
Terry Marshall gave me the swim test for the quarry. Terry sat in his lifeguard chair and watched.
I passed, but Terry said at one point he thought he'd have to jump in and get me. I was very tired and on the way back from the rope I paused for a bit, then dog paddled the rest of the way. I think that was 1960 or 1961.
Doug Hahn
I remember the stairs on the Little Riley having played there may times. Have waded it from College Avenue to Elm Street many times.
Another tidbit you may like to know is the pole lights you see in the pictures of the old swimming pool were repurposed as they had once graced Main Street a few years before. And, don’t forget the old brewery tunnel under Thurman Street leading to the Riley.
