Another curious image from Valentine’s Manual, 1863 issue, displaying that almanac’s continuing interest with McGowan’s Pass. The sledge may have been drawn from life, but the setting is just an imaginative reconstruction. You can imagine how the illustrator’s mind worked: There was a farmhouse, so there must have been a farm, so there must have been a barn, and cows and chickens…
Back in Central Park’s early days, if you kept a carriage, you probably kept a sleigh or sledge too. When the snows came you hitched it up and took a ride up the Central Park hills. When the Park ran a tavern at McGowan’s Pass (1866-1915), young bucks raced each other to the top at each winter’s first snowfall. The first driver to reach the tavern won a magnum of champagne.
Like so many of the other illustrations here, this one comes via the NYPL Picture Collection and its Digital Library.