From collection Jake Gillison Collection
LB2016.15.712
A team of six horses pulling a snow roller, Dover-Foxcroft, Maine. Long before the invention of the car, let alone the snow plow, the roads were made passable in winter in Maine not by removing the snow but by packing it down. A snow roller was essentially a giant, wide wheel weighed down with rocks and pulled by oxen or horses. This one was photographed in Dover Foxcroft circa 1890. Driving one of these contraptions was probably one of the coldest jobs one could have! To improve travel in winter conditions, horse carts and coaches traded their wheels in for ski-like runners. The more packed snow on the roads, the better. Road work in winter was more like maintaining a ski slope or smoothing out an ice rink, and they actually had to install snow on the pathways of covered bridges so that travel would not be interrupted. These packed roads provided for fairly easy travel, that is until the spring…. "127"
