Chronicles: The Ancram Swimming Pool

A little bird told me the Ancram swimming pool is reopening for the summer season. Before the Ancram swimming pool and adjacent Blass Memorial Field were built in 1960, Ancram swimmers, myself included, cooled off in Round Hole, a sharp kink in the Roeliff Jansen Kill about a mile out of town. Round Hole was down a dirt lane off what is now private property on Wiltsie Bridge Road, where swimmers shared the waters with snapping turtles the size of wash tubs. Meanwhile, Holstein milk cows from Sommerhoff Farm cooled off upstream; in the 1950s, the “solution to pollution was dilution.”

Ancram families desiring more “civilized” swimming waters had options such as Lake Taghkanic State Park (6.4 miles west), Taconic State Park Rudd Pond (12 miles east) and Taconic State Park’s “Ore Bed” at Copake Falls (8.5 miles north). Their hope was to one day be able to walk or bike to a swimming pool.

So, in 1960, Ancram built one down the hill behind the firehouse and the Ancram Tavern. Between the firehouse and the pool, a small softball field, Wallace Blass Memorial Field, was also carved out of the hillside.

A group of 19 town residents signed a $10,500 loan note for the pool, which was built by the Paddock Pool Company of Albany at a cost of $12,500. No tax money was used for the pool; all funds and labor were donated.

While I can’t recall if our Snyder family made a donation, we did provide in-kind equipment and labor. I distinctly remember driving our Chimney Hill Farm Ferguson 35 tractor with a disc harrow mounted on the rear three-point hitch over to Ancram to disc the emerging softball field.

As I rounded what we then referred to as “slate-bank curve” on Route 82, coming into the Ancram hamlet, I spied a toddler in a diaper weaving down the centerline of this “hardtop” road. Stopping the tractor on the shoulder, I scooped up the child and went looking for the house it belonged to. At about the third house on the left, I was met on the front porch by the frantic mother. Breathing a sigh of relief, I drove our tractor to my self-appointed task at Blass field. I disked the field several times, breaking up the soil for grass planting.

The early years saw significant use of the pool, especially the diving board. I remember being in awe of Larry Lampman, a contemporary from Roe Jan Central School — I attended PPCSD — who perfected his “front one and a half” flip off Ancram’s diving board. He is now 81 years old.

By 2005, the diving board and slide were long gone, replaced by a lifeguard chair and water basketball backboard, perhaps because of prohibitive insurance costs.

From late 2014 into the spring of 2015, a pool subcommittee of the Ancram Town Board, headed by board member and Town Justice Bob Wilcox, evaluated the future of the Ancram swimming pool due to dwindling attendance. A comprehensive report was presented at the March 19, 2015, board meeting, which concluded that the pool should remain open, but the costs were to be closely monitored.

Chronicles is the New Pine Plains Herald’s continuation of our My Pine Plains memoir series, chronicling life in and around Pine Plains, Ancram, Milan, Stanford and Gallatin. The Herald welcomes submissions from our readers that highlight memories and lived experiences from all people of all backgrounds.