The Weatherworks & Punxsutawney’s ‘Cold War’

By S. Thomas Curry of Hometown magazine

For many years past, wherever “Punxsutawney” was not known, the Groundhog rapidly made it known. Who in the Punxsutawney area doesn’t know the folklore about Groundhog Day? The small weekly newspapers of area communities reminded their readers about the day, according to the old German folklore taught them by early German settlers to the area from eastern Pennsylvania. Newspapers in Reynoldsville, Brockway, Marion (Marion Center in Indiana County), and others offered their annual reminders to keep the folklore alive among its settlers.

In Punxsutawney, on Thursday, February 2, 1871, the young editors of the Punxsutawney Plaindealer stated “TODAY is ‘ground-hog day.’ If not too thin he could see his shadow, as the sun shone quite awhile this forenoon.”

The weekly Punxsutawney Spirit and the weekly Valley News (Punxsutawney News) went into print in 1885 and 1886 respectively, and each newspaper offered their reminders about the folklore of February 2. On Wednesday, February 3, 1886, with young 26-year-old editor W. O. Smith, readers were provided a note: “Yesterday was ground-hog day, and the venturesome woodchuck that was curious enough about the weather to come out and take a look around would undoubtedly see his shadow, then sneak back into his hole, carefully draw the hole in after him, and stay there for six weeks.”

On that same day, the weekly Valley News would share its comment: “The ground-hog crawled out yesterday and was so scared at his shadow of his emaciated form that he concluded to retire for six weeks more.”

In all but two years of the 1890s, the weekly Punxsutawney Spirit had no reminder about the tradition of Groundhog Day in February. However on February 6, 1895, a news clip in the weekly Reynoldsville newspaper stated: “Saturday was the day the festive woodchuck is supposed to come forth from his underground retreat and gaze upon his shadow or not gaze upon it as the case may be. He is no good and the report that February 2nd was to be declared a legal holiday seems to have been without foundation.” No matter how it was stated, it was simply to report either six more weeks of winter or an early spring.

Through 25 years of the late nineteenth century, in each annual reminder about Groundhog Day, there was no connection made between Punxsutawney and Groundhog Day. In each report there is no mention about an organized group by any name to lead a trek to a particular spot to observe a groundhog by name, no festival of events to celebrate the event.

In the early 1900s, the Punxsutawney Spirit became the voice of Punxsutawney and its connection to a Punxsutawney-style

Groundhog Day and its claim to be the Home of the Groundhog and the Weather Capital of the World. In 1904, young 19year-old Clymer Freas, an area native with newspaper experience with the Reynoldsville Sun and Falls Creek Herald, became the city editor of the Spirit. In Punxsutawney history, it is dutifully recorded that Clymer Freas is “the father of the conception that Punxsutawney is the home of the Groundhog,” and that he brought attention to the Canoe Ridge Weatherworks” where the famed Bre’r Groundhog created the weather that is reported to the world on February 2. Freas’s obituary in 1942 states: “it was he who brought national prominence to Punxsutawney.”

- Continued on next page

MM Come See Our Ceramic Groundhogs

It's time to start thinking about VALENTINE'S DAY! Pre-order by phone or messenger. Online ordering coming soon!

724-954-0161

1575 St. Rt.1042, Dayton, PA www.cakeshotts.com

The Weatherworks

Continued from previous page

Canoe Ridge Weatherworks and the Groundhog

For a dozen years in the early 1900s, years before Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney became widely recognized, the event that captured the attention of readers in area and city newspapers was the annual Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Hunt and Feast. Held in a woodland location near Punxsutawney and widely attended, the annual “banquet” of roasted groundhog was held on warm days in September. The active, funloving men who attended were identified as the “Groundhoggers.”

Invitations to the event were sent from the “Office of the Punxsutawney Weatherworks, Canoe Ridge,” published in the Spirit and mailed to invited guests. In each, directions were given to Canoe Ridge, Indiana County, to a farm or grove three miles south of Punxsutawney. With some research of early Punxsutawney Spirit newspapers, [the Spirit became a daily newspaper in 1906] it was learned that the hunts and feasts were held at the Williard farm, the Knarr farm, the Rudolph farm, and the Stoops farm in Canoe Township, Indiana County, somewhere between Rossiter and Juneau.

Of interest to anyone traveling the route in the 21st century, the 1,630 feet of elevation of Canoe Ridge can be reached in about 15 minutes. This can be compared to the description of the trip in late summer, September 1908: “The official caravan, which left the plaza at 1:30 o’clock, journeyed in automobiles and carriages to the Williard farm … and struck camp near a big spring in a pretty grove at the foot of Groundhog Knob.” Usually, attendance at these earlier hunts was around 200 men. How long would a caravan of “autos” and carriages have been? How long did it take to get to Canoe Ridge?

Earlier that year, for Groundhog Day of February 2, 1908, would any group of men make a trek to Canoe Ridge to find a groundhog, “Bre’r Groundhog,” to make an official prognostication from a shadow (or no shadow)?

More likely, it was a written report by editor Clymer Freas in his style of imaginative and colorful exaggerations in words pre- pared in the comfortable office of the Spirit in downtown Punxsutawney. About the 1908 forecast he wrote: “The weather schedule committee members viewed the spectacle through the 300-inch shadowscope at the top of the weather pinnacle.”

For two days the Punxsutawney area was hit by a snow storm that isolated the town from the rest of the area. And this was not in the imagination of any Spirit reporter. Snow fell for two days, to include February 2. Snow drifts were reported at six feet. People in rural areas could not get to town, or otherwise to Canoe Ridge. In most years of winter, sleighs were used to travel between places.

While Freas reported that the weather was forecast from the Canoe Ridge Weatherworks, or Groundhog Knob, it was also recognized that in his imagination, weather was actually “manufactured” at the “official weatherworks. His reports included terms such as “shadowscope station,” “shadowgraphers” with a “silhouetteoscope,” “tubincular orifice” to interpret the groundhog’s shadow prediction.

His choice of words in “Weatherworks” was consistent with names for other factories or industries operating in Punxsutawney in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Among them are Nordstrom Brick Works in 1888, Punxsutawney Glass Works in 1890, making a variety of glass jars, Punxsutawney Iron Works in 1896, Mahoning Powder Works in 1902, producing dynamite to use in area mines, and in the early 1900s the four “bottling works” to bottle carbonated soft drinks.

The ‘Cold War’ with Indiana County

Earlier known as the Canoe Ridge Weatherworks or Groundhog Knob, the location for Punxsutawney’s Groundhog Day forecasts was eventually named Gobbler’s Knob in 1910, according to annual news reports in the Spirit. Until 1966 the exact location of Gobbler’s Knob was kept a secret. The “Knob” of Punxsutawney Groundhog Days moved to numerous locations finally settling on a hilltop at the top of Woodland Avenue in the East End, known as Corey’s Roundtop by local residents. At the same time the first summer Punxsutawney Groundhog Festival was held in downtown Punxsutawney. For years, the history about the visits to

- Continued on next page