This Smoketown now rests on York County lake floor
A championship horsehoe-pitching team poses at a location now flooded by Lake Redman. Three Lake Redman-related background posts: Mile-a-minute weed’s York County origins questioned, Memorial honoring victims of alcohol-related crashes should be visited and Rainmaker’s visit indicates much awry in York.
Over at sister blog The Lineup Card, Chris Otto connects the York-based national horseshoe pitching tournament just passed, local horseshoe pitching champions from old and the York County locale known as Smoketown… .
The waters of Lake Redman have snuffed Smoketown’s smoke, but the post might bring back memories to some.
Here is the caption which ran with the photo submitted to the York Daily Record in August 2008:
“In the wake of the World Horseshoe Pitching Championships that were held in York County last month, Carl ‘Red’ Arnold of Jacobus sent us a bit of local horseshoes history from 1934. Arnold writes: ‘I doubt if there are many people who would remember the Smoketown Horseshoe Team shown on this enclosed picture. Smoketown was located in Springfield Township between Jacobus and Spring/Leader Heights. It is presently under Lake Redman. The location on the picture can be reached by driving from Church Street/Hess Road in Jacobus, north on York Road to a dead-end at Lake Redman. That connects to Vireo Road that goes to Leader Heights Road. In old farm days until I-83 was built and also Lake Redman, the York Road and Green Valley Road connected across the Codorus Creek on the old iron bridge shown on the picture. The horseshoe courts were located right along Codorus Creek.’ Pictured in Arnold’s photo from 1934 are (front row, from left) Curvin Sheffer, John Lartz, Ervin ‘Jake’ Myers and Noah Shearer; (second row, from left) Earl Arnold, William A. Arnold, Clair ‘Rupp’ Myers, Stewart ‘Slim’ Arnold and Sterling ‘Mule’ Arnold; (back row, from left) William Sowers, Henry Shearer, Sterling ‘Goose’ Myers, William E. Arnold and Carl O. Arnold.”
Also of interest:
York County had many Smoketowns in years gone by.
