Oneonta, Lake Enjoyed. And It Was Electric

A boater rows across Electric Lake, Oneonta’s long-forgotten playground.

By JIM KEVLIN

Wouldn’t it be great to have a lake right in the city?
A short walk away, we could fish, canoe, boat, swim, hike along the shore.
Stop the presses:  Oneonta used to have one, Electric Lake, at the end of Rose Avenue on the east side.
“I’ve never heard of Electric Lake, and I’ve lived in Oneonta all my life,” Susan Plantz, a Greater Oneonta Historical Society trustee, remarked at a briefing Saturday, Jan. 8, on an upcoming History Center show.
The exhibit, put together by local railroad historian Jim Loudon, “Electric Lake: Oneonta’s Forgotten Gem,” will be launched at a reception Saturday, April 16, and run for two months.
During that period, probably in May when things dry up a bit, Bouton will lead a mile-long walking tour into the bowels of what was once the lake, and now is the I-88 right-of-way between the Emmons and Lettis Highway exits.
“It’s always bothered me that there’s a segment of local history that’s going to get lost,” explained Loudon, who as a boy used to fish there with his dad, for sunfish, perch and bullheads.
The lake was built in 1898 by the Oneonta Light & Power Co. when it was discovered the new trolley company had pushed the then-village’s electric supply beyond capacity.
The dam and powerhouse were built at the end of Conant Avenue (aka Water Street), south of the railroad tracks and behind where Oneonta Iron & Metal is today.
Complete, the powerhouse’s three 500-horsepower turbines turned by undershot wheels created enough electricity to power the city for decades.
The D&H embankment became the northern shore of the lake, which ranged from 6- to 12-feet deep.  The lake extended a mile east.
In 1918, Ithaca Gas & Electric Co. acquired the Oneonta company, and IG&E was eventually acquired by New York State Electric & Gas, which closed the plant in 1954 and breached the dam, signalling Electric Lake’s demise.
When I-88 came through in the 1970s, it was the ideal open space to accommodate the new four-lane.
Gone Electric Lake may be, but it’s not completely forgotten.
Gina Tarbox from Chenango Bridge, whose family settled in Oneonta in the 1830s, had driven up for Loudon’s briefing, and brought along a letter handwritten to her grandfather, Charles Tarbox, by his father, Duncan, describing a drowning recounted to him by Gil Lane, then OL&P superintendent.
With the boy’s mother near-hysterical, eyewitnesses stripped off their clothes and dove repeatedly into the water by the powerhouse where the lad disappeared, but to no avail.
“His little clothes lay on the beach where he took them off for the last time,” Duncan reported.
Frank Montgomery attended the briefing with wife, Joyce.  He was raised on Chester Street in the 1940s, and they ran into Julie Spaziani, who was raised in the same house in the 1950s.
Julie remembered dashing down Chester and Rose, crossing the railroad tracks to the western end of the lake, where there was swimming and good fellowship.  There was also a dock there, and boats tied up along the shore.
Wayne Wright, NYSHA associate librarian, was a boy on Sand Street in 1954 when the lake was drained, and remembered a large snapping turtle showing up in his backyard.
“You can’t get too close to those things:  They can take your fingers off,” said Wright, recalling that his grandfather put the reptile in a wash tub and hauled it away.
Dead fish were strewn along the whole length of the former waterway, he said.