Adirondack Daily Enterprise, April 21, 1952
Ice Guessers Contest Is Won By Woman
Shades of the original Ice Guessers' Association — a woman has won the 1952 contest!
Mrs. Truman Wells, of 4 St. Lawrence street, gave Mother Nature an hour's leeway to clear the ice out of Lower Saranac Lake, but nevertheless she made a closer guess than 13 other contestants who named April 20 as ice removal date.
Mrs. Wells said the ice would go at 10:30 a. m. It disappeared into Ampersand Bay at 9:30 a. m., say Jack Buehler, veteran guide and ice guesser, and Eddie Vogt, who judged the contest from Lower Saranac shores.
Mrs. Wells won the N. "Pete" Higgins contest, and today had a Swift's Premium ham for her shrewd grasp of native lore.
Over in Bloomingdale an ex-Saranac Lake resident, Jim Coughlin, looks back to the Lower Saranac Lake ice disappearance as a sign of Spring. Unable to get that feeling out of his system, Coughin runs a contest on ice guessing, too. Although Bloomingdalers are encouraged to cast their ballots, Coughlin's prize ham went to Gilbert Pratt, of Pontiac street, Saranac Lake.
Mrs. Wells was one of 400 contestants in the '52 ice guessing race. She's the first woman to win, but it's only been the past few years, since "Pete" Higgins took over, that women have gained suffrage rights in ice guessing.
Among the guessers was Theodore S. Hanmer, 92 in February and a resident of the Lower Saranac's shores. Hanmer chose Saturday for the ice to disappear and he wasn't far wrong — it did break up out in the middle of the lake Saturday afternoon — but clung around the edges until 9:30 yesterday morning to put Mr. Hanmer out of the running.
Ice guessing dates back, records show, to 1907 when the original Ice Guessers Association was founded. A tight little group which guessed for years, the association numbered five local guides — Mr. Buehler, Joe Walsh, Herb Williams, Harry Duso, the late Jim White — and. by special vote, the late Ed LaBounty.
The five guides lived as caretakers on Lower Saranac Lake. Mr. LaBounty, a city slicker from Saranac Lake, was such a good guesser that he was finally given an honorary membership.
The original group spent the entire winter studying ice conditions on their lake and, as Spring tried to break through, they gradually settled on dates for the ice to leave. There was a deadline for guessing. Then the six sat back and watched eagerly to see who would be right.
The earliest recorded date for ice to leave Lower Saranac was March 28, 1907. In 1928 the ice kept winter here until May 8 — the longest season yet.
