For generations, swimmers packed Mendon Ponds Park for a summertime dip whereas sunbathers soaked within the rays within the park’s seashore space.
The park had a employees of lifeguards, a bathhouse for altering and a refreshment stand. On sizzling summer season days, crowds numbering within the 1000’s have been widespread on the seashore.
Swimming classes have been provided for many years. Mendon Ponds stayed open whereas different space seashores closed attributable to water-quality points.
The seashore stays at Mendon Ponds, now lined with grass. The lifeguards are lengthy gone and swimming is prohibited. So, why did swimming cease at Mendon Ponds Park?
A number of individuals posted fond reminiscences on Fb. “I can nonetheless hear Dad and Mother telling us to stroll out till we have been chest deep and swim again in,” wrote Cathy Caruso, now of Victorville, California.
Nicholas Konz of The Woodlands, Texas, added, “My mother dragged me and my brother down there for swimming classes day-after-day one summer season within the ’70s. The lifeguards needed to rigorously flip over the boats to push back the skunks every morning.”
Monroe County acquired the property that turned Mendon Ponds Park within the late Nineteen Twenties. The primary newspaper accounts of swimming there — with lifeguards — got here the next decade.
Situated in southeastern Monroe County, Mendon Ponds doesn’t border Lake Ontario, like Ontario Seaside and Durand-Eastman parks. Swimming at Mendon Ponds was in a pond fashioned tens of 1000’s of years in the past by glacial exercise.
A 1977 Upstate story about native “swimming holes” talked about Mendon Ponds. “The swimming space…reaches a depth of 15 toes, has a slow-pitched sandy backside, and a sandy seashore for idle sunning,” the story acknowledged. The enjoyable with swimming holes carved by nature, the story famous, are the “bends and dips, mysteries and native legends.”
By the late ‘30s, information tales reported in extra of 10,000 “bather-hours” at Mendon Ponds on busy days. Within the Forties, Mendon Ponds led the way in which in variety of swimming classes given amongst county park seashores and was labeled the world’s most secure seashore for younger youngsters.
A information account mentioned it was “quickly turning into the Jones Seaside of Monroe County,” referring to the favored swimming space close to Manhattan. A 1944 Democrat and Chronicle story profiled the primary feminine lifeguard at Mendon Ponds and, utilizing sexist language of the time, mentioned the 16-year-old lady was doing “a person’s job of guarding the lives of space swimmers.”
In 1956, the pond was stocked for the primary time with a whole bunch of trout. Three years later, a whole bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses have been baptized within the pond following a daylong session on the Group Battle Memorial.
Swimming continued annually. Brian Terho posted on Fb that he received horrible ear infections within the late ’50s from what his physician attributed to swimming at Mendon Ponds Park. “Our household saved going anyway as a result of we beloved it there,” Terho wrote. “I simply saved my head out of the water.”
When air pollution and excessive micro organism counts closed different space seashores within the Sixties and early ’70s, the one at Mendon Ponds remained in enterprise. A 1974 Democrat and Chronicle story reported that Mendon Ponds’ seashore was the one county-operated seashore formally open that summer season. One other story talked about that Mendon Ponds’ seashore water was often muddy however “appeared in good situation.”
By 1977, county officers thought of charging a price to make use of the seashore at Mendon Ponds as a part of an effort to make parks extra “self-supporting.” As a part of that proposal, there was discuss of putting in a fence or wall across the pond to forestall freeloaders from sneaking in.
Then-County Parks Director Calvin Reynolds known as the plans “a farce,” and added, “I don’t know who would pay to swim in that mud pond anyway.”
One lady posted on Fb that Mendon Ponds by the ’70s was good for “dog-swimming solely.” However individuals saved swimming there, and lifeguards continued doing their factor.
Inside a decade or so, issues modified.
County officers pulled lifeguards from Mendon Ponds in late August 1990, every week or so earlier than the standard Labor Day finale. The explanation given was a lifeguard scarcity at different seashores and swimming pools.
Lifeguards returned for 1991, however that was the tip. As a part of a deficit-reduction plan, county legislators eradicated lifeguards from Mendon Ponds for 1992. They by no means returned.
Swimmers often did, cooling off within the “unsanctioned” swimming space. In 1994, there was discuss once more of charging a price to revive lifeguard providers, however nothing apparently got here of that.
By all accounts, the once-popular space now not is even appropriate for swimming, at the least for people. “In 28 years, the pond has been ‘naturalized,’” mentioned former Parks Director Larry Staub. “Vegetation has grown in. Water-life and waterfowl have staked their declare there.” Swimming at Mendon Ponds is only a fond reminiscence.
Alan Morrell is a former Democrat and Chronicle reporter and a Rochester-area freelance author.
This story was initially printed in August 2019 as a part of the No matter Occurred To collection.
This text initially appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Mendon Ponds Park was a popular Monroe County swimming hole for years
