Editors Note:This bit of Caribou history was compiled by Wendy Bossie, retired archive librarian at the Caribou Public Library.
As we celebrate the 150th birthday of Caribou, we are reminded that ice skating was more popular during the early 1900s. One moonlit December night in 1904, on the Aroostook River, over a hundred young people skated from the dam far up the pond behind it. They built a fire. Suddenly there were sharp cracklings and the party felt the ice heave. There were shouts of “The ice is running.” They all jumped over open water to safety on the banks. Brick Currier and Ray Gary were the last to leave the ice. The fire disappeared over the dam but all lives were saved.
Early winter carnivals featured skating contests – dashes and races as long as a mile. The early events were held on Collins Pond. Later on, over 1,000 people lined the banks of the rink on Park St. to see exhibitions of fancy skating from professionals from New Brunswick. A local man, J. Oscar Bedard, skated through a tunnel of flaming burlap.
In the 1950s, the Teague Park skating rink was where we went after school, on weekends and on winter school vacations. Rock and roll music blared from the loudspeakers and the warming hut was crowded with people either coming or going. Most of us had our own skates, but we could rent skates. The skating rink was the place to be.
