Riding on a Rolling Pin - A Horse-Drawn Snow Roller

So far, December 2010 appears to be one of the coldest and snowiest in the Midwest. Usually, in my town, in Indiana, we can count on prompt snow removal. However thankful I am, I always wonder why the city can’t plow the street in front of our home a little closer to the drive. We live at the point of an “L” shaped street where the tendency is for the plows to make a short swing around the corner sufficing for a plowed street. Obviously, that leaves approximately five feet of the street we have to shovel before we can get to the plowed area. Oh, for the good ‘ole days.

Okay, in the good ‘ole days, no record of snowplows exists until 1862. Up until that time, most roads were made passable by animal-drawn snow rollers. If you can picture a rolling pin, you can picture a snow roller. Teams of horses pulled the rollers across the snow, compressing it multiple times, in order to make a smooth running surface for wagons and sleighs alike. The packed snow took care of badly rutted roads, so most were actually easier to travel on once the snow had been packed down and smoothed. It wasn’t until well into the twentieth century that most localities dispensed of the snow rollers and moved on to motorized removal of the snow.

This photo of a horse-drawn snow roller is used by permission from the Andover Historical Society in Andover, Maine.