more about mittineague

[kip_w]

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Excerpts from my flickr photoset on the old Mittineague pool.



As recently as 1954, the town still came to the pool in Mittineague Park in West Springfield. West Springfield absorbed Mittineague years ago (the original Post Office building and the "new" Post Office building are still in use -- not for their original purpose, of course -- down on Front Street by the Agawam Westfield River). Oddly enough, West Springfield has lost some territory, too: Holyoke was once part of West Springfild, but split off before the Civil War (as we Northerners call it).



In the above picture (which I scanned from a local history), the water level is almost up to the foot of the bridge and the sidewalk around the pool. There is a glimpse in the foreground of the near edge of the pool.



Now it looks like this. A flood in the 50s (I'm not clear on when, obviously) destroyed the downhill side of the pool, which now looks like the bank of a brook, which it is. There's a weedy island in the middle as well. You can see the water that runs down a big rock (seems natural, but what do I know?) under another bridge. There are other stone walls, and some steps leading down as well, near that waterfall.



The landscapers haven't tried to keep up with the weeds, but the uphill parts of the stonework are still in nice shape. This year, a Scout has undertaken a project of stabilization and some reclamation for his Eagle badge, but when I visited the place this week I saw that some clever soul has managed to push the straw bales down into the water. Huh, huh! Bales fall down when ya push 'em! I told a maintenance guy I ran into this morning, and they've apparently already fixed it once. There's always some loser who likes to mess stuff up.



Grooves in the lower walls of the bridge seem to have held a dam that kept the water level up when the pool was still viable. Though damaged by the flood that ruined the thing, the stonework on the bridge feels more solid than the flakey bridge over the duck pond at Stanley Park in Westfield. When we visited that a couple of months back, I had to caution Sarah and her friend from walking on the stone wall in the water, because bits of it were coming off.



And here's a view of the intact pool wall from the bridge. You can also see the stone bench by the walk. I don't know if the pool bottom was paved in its glory days or if it was the natural brook bottom. The former, I'd hope. You can't tell now by looking, though.

And this concludes our brief tour of the Mittineague Pool. Next up (or previously up, if you're reading your Friends Page in its usual backwards order), a look at the mouldering wreck that was once Holyoke's premier amusement venue, Mountain Park. (The photos are already up at flickr, as are some additional photos of Mittineague. They're part of the same photoset. If flickr won't let you look at my pictures, be patient and I'll put some here. Also, let me know what system you use, what URL you tried to look at, what error messages you got, if any, and any other relevant data that might help those gallant souls at flickr's tech help figure out my problem, which they won't even start attempting, apparently, until they get information. ZEY VANT INFORMATION!)
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Comments

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Fascinating how the weeds and water have taken over.

[meggins.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it was very nice to have a town pool, but I rather like the way it all looks now.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

We have a town pool in West Springfield -- two of them, in fact, and one isn't all that far from here. It was in somewhat derelict condition last year, before the renovations that made it darn near a new pool for this summer, so the pix I took are kind of out of date now. I wish I'd been able to go inside the old building, though, because they simply eliminated a lot of it, and it used to be a bath house inside, as well as changing rooms for the pool.

One of the weirdest sights I've ever been privy too was a former bath house, up in the Rockies between Fairplay and Leadville. The place seemed to have been deteriorating since FDR's second term. At the time I saw it -- around 1979 -- it was run by some hippies (who I didn't see). A large rainbow had been painted on the main building, apparently around 1968, from the condition of the peeling paint. There were five motel rooms in a separate building, which the owners would let folks crash in, I was told.

The folks I was with peeled down (as did I) and soaked in the hot spring in a small building adjoining the main one. I don't know how deep it was. It was mostly a dirt pool with a boardwalk on one side that we could sit on. I looked up when I was in the water and got my first feeling of deja-vu of the day. There was a dark loft above me with some ruined machinery in it, and it felt like something from a dream -- perhaps one of the classic "abandoned amusement park" dreams that I used to have. After a while, I decided to go see the main building, and tiptoed awkwardly over the rubble-strewn floor. I tried the first door off the hallway, and inside was an old-fashioned bathtub, full of the dirt and dust of the decades -- second hit of deja-vu, even larger than the first. Alas, time was pressing, so I rejoined my group, got dressed, and went back to their trailer in Alma.

I never made it back to the hot spring. I've searched for it online, but to no avail.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

(They called it Rainbow Hot Spring, for obvious reasons, but the name doesn't bring up any good matches.)