Pennsylvania Archives - Maple Syrup History

Bringing New Life to An Old Boiling Arch: Adding Flat Pan Boiling to Maple History at Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum

By Matthew M. Thomas

I was excited to recently learn of a great project to excavate, reconstruct, and reuse an open-air stone and earth boiling arch for supporting a flat pan for boiling maple sap.

Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum. Phot courtesy of Janet Woods.

With the help of the Boy Scouts from Erie County’s General McLane School District Troop 176 and Legacy Troop 73, Boy Scout J.C. Williams completed this project as part of his Eagle Badge at the sugarbush of the Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum near Edinboro, Pennsylvania.

Cover of Virginia Sorensen’s Newberry Medal winning book, Miracles on Maple Hill.

Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum is home to a great family-friendly maple museum that showcases the history of maple syrup but also tells the tale of the back story of Virginia Sorensen’s 1957 Newberry Award winning children’s book, Miracles on Maple Hill. In writing the book, Virginia Sorensen drew from her experiences living in northwest Pennsylvania. A significant portion of the story of Miracles on Maple Hill centers on activities in a rural sugarhouse and sugarbush as a family struggles to work together to overcome and deal with the father’s trauma of returning to home life after World War Two.

The sugar house at Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum. Photo by author.

But Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum is much more than a museum, which is open all year round. Hurry Hill also has a working sugarbush and outdoor maple history interpretive walking trail that are open for visitors during the sugaring season. The methods and appearance of the syrup making in the sugarhouse are fairly rustic and consistent with what one would see in much of the 20^th century. In fact, construction of two sugarhouses on the farm date to 1930. Also on display are a series of large iron kettles suspended over an open fire to show how maple sugaring was done in the colonial era.

Demonstration of boiling sap in kettles at Hurry Hill Maple Farm. Photo courtesy of Eric Marendt.

On the annual Northwest Pennsylvania Maple Association Taste & Tour weekend, Scouts from the above-mentioned troops are busy demonstrating boiling sap in the iron kettles, explaining the history and process to interested visitors. It is common at demonstration sites teaching about the history of maple syrup to show the colonial era method of boiling in kettles. Luckily for the Scouts, who otherwise spend the weekend standing around in the cold and wind, they have protection from the elements in the form of an Adirondack shelter that was built at the site in 2013 as part of another Scout’s Eagle Badge project.

Historic image from 1927 of open air boiling on a flat pan and stone arch. Photo from Wisconsin Historical Society collections.

What was is usually missing from the presentation of the evolution of sap boiling technology is the use of a flat pan on a rudimentary platform and firebox, a boiling method that replaced the less efficient kettles but preceded the shift to formal commercial evaporators and the construction of sugar houses.

Historic image of use of a flat pans balanced on a stone and earth arch. Photo from Wisconsin Historical Society collections.

Thankfully, Hurry Hill Maple Farm’s owner Janet Woods, whose family has been working this sugarbush since 1939, realized that there was the long-forgotten remains of an old stone and earth arch perfectly situated in the sugarbush along the interpretive walking trail between the sugarhouse, the kettles and Adirondack shelter. From his previous years of telling about the kettle boiling process at the Taste & Tour weekend, senior scout J.C. Williams had an understanding of the role of the arch and flat pan in the evolution of boiling technology. Through conversations with Janet Woods, J.C. Williams was also aware of the presence of the remains of the old stone and earth arch and proposed that as his Eagle Badge project, the Scout Troop would dig it up and rebuild it in the fall and in the following spring use it to boil sap with a flat pan.

Eagle Scout J.C. Williams taking measurements of abandoned stone and earth arch before beginning excavation in October 2022. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

Plans were put into motion and the excavation and reconstruction work was caried out over the course of a weekend in October 2022, under the direction of J. C. Williams and with the assistance of a few of his fellow scouts, their fathers, and the troop leader Eric Marendt. Initially, measurements and notes were made of the size, shape and appearance to be able to rebuild the arch as close to those specifications as possible. After that, vegetation was cleared and the soil was removed from around the rocks and in the central firebox area.

Excavations in progress of stone arch by scouts and parents from Troops 73 and 176. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

Having visited Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum the previous summer, Janet Woods was aware of my interest in all things maple history but she also knew that I was an archaeologist who actually had first-hand experience with researching and documenting stone and earth boiling arches. Janet contacted me to tell me about their progress and ask for any advice or details of what to look for and expect. I spoke briefly with the scouts on the day of the excavation to give them an idea of what their digging might find. I also sent them a handful of historic photos of similar arches in use as well as some images from archaeological investigations of arches.

Close up photo of reused scrap metal that was recovered from the excavations of the stone and earth arch. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

I also shared that from my research experience and from my knowledge of other excavations of similar arches, it was very common to find miscellaneous pieces of old heavy metal that were used as makeshift fire grates, supports and leveling pieces for the flat pan, and as walls to the interior fire ox and arch door. True to form, the scout’s excavation work uncovered an assortment of metal from old car parts, metal bar, and an old cross-cut saw blade.

Reconstructed stone and earth boiling arch with metal support beams and interior grate, ready for the sap to flow the flowing spring. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

After dismantling the arch, the scouts rebuilt it with an eye to making it a strong, functional and level support for a heavy metal flat pan that would be filled with maple sap for boiling the following spring. Repurposed old pieces of metal pipe and a grate were added for the fire box and as supports to slide the 3 1/2 foot by 4 /1/2 foot flat pan on and off the fire.

As an archaeologist I have had the priveledge of finding and recording dozens of similar stone arches and have read reports of similar investigations of abandoned arches, some bult for small 2 x 3 flat pans and other built for pans possibly as large as 5 x 12 feet.

Two photos of the reconstructed arch and flat pan in operation. Note the Adirondack shelter built by the scout troop in 2013 in the back of the photo on the right. Photos courtesy of Eric Marendt.

View of the reconstructed arch in use with flat pan evaporating sap at Hurry Hill Maple Farm. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

In the case of this project, it was especially enjoyable for me to see that not only were these scouts able to learn something about arch technology and use from its excavation, but in the spirit of experimental archaeology, that they were going to learn even more by taking it to the next two steps of rebuilding and reusing the arch. It is true that there are still many backyard sugarmakers that use a small flat pan like was used here, but most folks build cinderblock arches or use some other modern materials.

Eagle Scout J.C. Williams on left, with fellow scout and parents at work reconstructing the stone and earth arch in October 2022. Note the size of the stones that were used and reset in the arch. Photo courtesy of Jante Woods.

It is exceedingly rare today to find anyone still building a stone and earth arch. With the help of a knowledgeable volunteer at Hurry Hill Maple Farm, the scouts had a bonus of a geology lesson, when Kirk Johnson, himself an Eagle Scout 55 years ago, explained the glacial significance and thermal properties of the large glacial erratic granite boulders that had been selected and used in the original build of the arch.

Historic image from 1957 of sap boiling n a flat pan on stone arch. Photo from Wisconsin Historical Society collections.

Like the many hundreds and thousands of families that constructed arches their sugarbushes from the stones and left over metal at their disposal, these scouts had the real experience of learning how to best, level the pan and boil in a stone arch, not to mention how to get the best fire and airflow. If one thing is true, scouts love a reason to play with fire and you can bet that by the end of the weekend, these scouts had a pretty strong boil going from the 50 gallons they collected from pails on nearby trees.

With the arrival of the 2023 maple season and the annual Taste & Tour weekend at Hurry Hill Maple Farm, the scouts were able to put their work to the test and add the reconstructed stone arch and flat pan to the maple history tour and educational program. In mid-March, six scouts camped out in the snow along side the Adirondack shelter, kettles, and flat pan with additional scouts from the troop joining during the day to help with the tour, keeping the fires burning and the steam rising.

Groups shot of the flat pan and arch in use with scouts and parents from Troops 73 and 176 with Janet Woods on far right. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

Many maple education programs suffer from an over-emphasis on romanticized presentations of the early history of maple syrup and sugar making technology, such as showing the use of kettles but leaving out flat pans. In fact, one could argue that the use of flat pans and stone arches like the one rebuilt at Hurry Hill Maple Farm was even more extensive in numbers and spread and had a much greater economic importance than the era and use of iron kettles. As a promoter and sometimes critic of the telling of maple history, what made me happy with this story, besides simply seeing a younger generation show interest in maple syrup history, was that Hurry Hill Maple Farm was now able to tell and show visitors a more complete history of the changes and improvements to maple syrup technology. What was a great maple history museum and very good maple education program is only that much better.

Special thanks to Janet Woods, Eric Marendt, and the scouts from Troops 73 and 176 for sharing their story and photos of this project and letting us all enjoy this experience.

Mountain Meadow Farms: Somerset County’s Modern Central Evaporator Plant

By Matthew M. Thomas

Mountain Meadow Farms was a gigantic maple syrup operation and game farm that operated in Somerset County, Pennsylvania in the 1960s and 1970s. Somerset County is known for its prominence and history as a maple syrup producing area in Pennsylvania. What made Mountain Meadow Farms unique, both in general and in Somerset County in particular, was that rather than being a small family sugaring operation that grew over time, Mountain Meadow Farms was created from scratch as a new operation on a scale not previously seen with the most modern technology and design available at the time.

1974 advertisement for Mountain Meadow Farms from The Republic out of Meyersdale, PA.

The Farms began in 1964 when Blaine “Bud” Walters and his wife Geneva purchased an existing game farm in the hills of Somerset County about two miles north of the village of New Baltimore, Pennsylvania. The Walters were the owners of the successful Walters Tire Service in the town of Somerset. Started in 1941, Walters Tire Service focused on manufacturing, retreading, and selling large size tires for road building equipment and servicing large trucks used in the Pennsylvania coal industry.

Mountain Meadow Farms had its own custom-designed lithographed metal syrup cans. A popular can among syrup can collectors.

According to one account, it was the Walters farm manger Gerald Grasser, who came up with the idea of making maple syrup. As the Walters’ son Jimmy Walters tells it, “Bud never did anything small. When they bought the farm it already had pheasants. There were two pens of pheasants when they bought it and they added turkeys and cattle. There were lots of maple trees so it made sense to tap those.” In addition to pheasants and turkeys, there were chuckers too. Cattle was usually around 300 head, but at one point with calves and heifers, it got up to close to 1000 head which required a lot of feed and work with Walters installing big Harvestore silos and automated feeding machines.

Mountain Meadow Farms sugarhouse in 1967. Photo from March 30, 1967 Bedford County Press article.

When Walters settled on the idea of starting a maple operation around 1963, over the next two years he promptly did everything he could to learn about the maple syrup business. For example, in 1965 he attended Maple Industry Conference in Philadelphia and when it became known just how large of an operation he was planning, he was put in touch with Adin Reynolds of Reynolds Sugar Bush, in Aniwa, Wisconsin, at that time the largest maple sugaring operation in the world. In addition to being able to offer Walters practical advice on setting up and running an operation of this size, the Reynolds Sugar Bush was an equipment dealer for the Vermont Evaporator Company and in the fall of 1965 made the sale to Walters of three 6 x 20’ oil fired evaporators along with all the requisite piping, tanks, and finishing equipment, as well as tapping supplies, plastic tubing and bags for collecting sap from around 20,000 trees. A brand new, 50 x 110 foot, state of the art sugar house was built at a cost of $75,000, complete with finishing area, candy making room, and sales area.

View of Mountain Meadow Farms sugarhouse sales room. Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

In all likelihood, the Reynolds encouraged Walters to focus not only on tapping his many thousands of trees, but also to initiate a plan to get local farmers and families to gather and sell sap to him, similar to how the Reynolds operated their many Central Evaporator Plants in Wisconsin. The Walters made purchasing sap a big part of their operation right from the start. In the spring of 1966 in their first year of operation, they tapped 17,000 of their own trees and bought sap from 8,000 trees tapped by others in the vicinity. In the following years Walters increased his sap buying efforts bringing in sap from 25,000 trees paying 5 cents a gallon for delivered sap and 4 cents per gallon for sap that was picked up. As Jimmy Walters recalled, the farm had a mini fleet of tank trucks to pick up and haul sap along with four 10,000 gallon open tanks for sap storage. The farm was also able to enlist the efforts of a number of local 4-H clubs and scout groups to taps trees and gather maple sap, a valuable fundraiser for their organizations.

Mountain Meadow Farms new sugarhouse, circa 1966. Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

The Walters were new to the maple business, but they quickly made it known that they manufactured a good product, taking home a number of awards for their maple candy and confections in the judging at the county maple festivals. Despite their newness to the maple industry, Bud Walters’ growing role as an industry leader was recognized and in 1969 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Somerset County Maple Syrup Producers. In 1970 Bud Walters was crowned county Maple King based on the performance of Mountain Meadow Farms maple products at the festival. Rightly so, Bud acknowledged that that award was only possible because of his wife’s efforts and it really should go to her. However, there were certainly some maple producers from the area who were suspicious and resentful of his approach and rapid success.

Geneva Walters in 1970 displaying some of her marketing packages in the Mountain Meadow Farms sales room. From March 30, 1970 article in Somerset, PA’s Daily American.

The farm sold most of its products through direct sales and mail order sales and through accounts with a number of restaurants and a few retail locations in Pittsburgh. Mail order sales piggy backed on their sale of game birds with a special package of a smoked pheasant and a fresh pheasant and maple syrup. In addition to making syrup and candy, and encouraging the use of creative and attractive packaging, Geneva Walters was a strong proponent of expanding the range of products that could be made and marketed with maple syrup. Related to that, Jimmy Walters shared that his mother was so influential in introducing new maple products, such as a maple syrup based salad dressing, that the Somerset County maple festival was forced to add more categories for judging beyond the traditional syrup, sugar, and candy. Jimmy added that this was one of his parents most important contributions, expanding the range of maple products being made and opening folks’ eyes in the county to other ways to sell and make maple syrup.

View of the USDA Eastern Utilization Research Lab experimental reverse osmosis sap concentrator in use at Mountain Meadow Farms 1969 and 1970, Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

As a large operation focused on efficiency and cutting-edge technology, it was chosen in 1969 as the test site of the USDA’s Eastern Utilization Research Lab experimental Reverse Osmosis (R.O.) system. C.O. Willits and his colleagues from USDA’s Philadelphia Lab had developed a portable R.O. unit for testing in real-world sugaring operations. The previous season it was tested at the Sipple sugarbush in Bainbridge, NY but it was decided that the amount of sap available from the Sipple sugarbush for running through the R.O. was insufficient to really measure the R.O.’s performance. Instead, the lab researchers needed a larger operation like Bud Walters’ to really test how well it processed sap. The USDA test R.O. was operated at Mountain Meadow Farms again the following season, contributing valuable information to the USDA labs development and improvement of reverse osmosis as a viable technology for the maple syrup industry.

View of the entrance to the Mountain Meadow Farms sugarhouse. Note the reverse osmosis unit inside. Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

Making syrup from 40,000 to 45,000 taps in the 1960s and 1970s positioned Mountain Meadow Farms as arguably the second largest maple operation in the world, second only to the Reynolds Sugar Bush in Wisconsin. By 1974 the farm was advertising itself to be “The Largest and Most Modern Central Evaporating Plant in the World!” and was clearly helping push and pull the maple industry to a new level of technological sophistication. But it did come with costs. According to Jimmy Walters, the farms had fairly high overhead with payroll to meet and little actual profit coming in. Many of the business ventures the Walters were involved with, including Mountain Meadow Farms were operating on loans and credit and at that time interest rates were relatively high at around 20-21%. The last season of the Mountain Meadow Farms maple syrup making operation was the spring of 1977. When the costs of operation became too great Bud Walters decided to sell and attempted to keep the sugaring operation together and sell it as a package to an interested buyer. Unfortunately, at that time, the scale of the operation was simply too large for any potentially interested buyers. In May 1978 the farming and sugaring equipment of the farm were sold at auction and the Mountain Meadow Farms ceased to operate. Bud and Geneva Walters passed the tire business to their son Jimmy in 1978 and enjoyed retirement. Bud passed away in 1990 and Geneva in 1995.

Special thanks to Mark Ware, Executive Director of the Somerset County Historical Center and to Jimmy Walters, son of Bud and Geneva Walters, for their assistance and sharing of personal memories and materials.

Recommended Reads: Maple History from a Local or Regional Perspective

Every few years a new book comes out on the culture or history of maple sugaring and maple syrup many which are highlighted on this website. In addition to these new and easily found books are a number of classics that those interested in maple history may want to look for and add to their collections. Here are four such books written with a local or regional focus that were all published over ten years ago, some of which are now out of print.

From oldest to newest, first we have the book When the Sugar Bird Sings: The History of Maple Syrup in Lanark County by Claudia Smith. Published in 1996, this great little book features the history and stories of maple sugar and syrup making in and around Lanark County, Ontario. It is illustrated with numerous historic photos of Lanark County maple operations and boasts of Lanark County as the Maple Capital or Ontario. While out of print, this book can be found used online at such sources as www.abebooks.com and www.amazon.com.

Next up in the lineup is a massive 578-page tome from 1998 titled Reynolds, Maple and History: Fit For Kings by the late Lynn H. Reynolds from Aniwa, Wisconsin. This book, a labor of love for Lynn Reynolds that highlights the events and importance of the Reynolds family and their Reynolds Sugarbush, was privately published in a limited run of 450 copies by the Reynolds family, sadly only a few weeks following Lynn’s passing. In the 1960s and 1970s the Reynolds Sugarbush was the single largest maple syrup producing company in United States or Canada, making maple syrup from well over 125,000 taps. The three men of the company, father Adin Reynolds (1905-1987), and brothers Lynn H. Reynolds (1936-1998) and Juan L. Reynolds (1930-2008) were all prominent leaders in the maple industry during their heyday and both Adin and Lynn were inducted into the Maple Syrup Producers Hall of Fame.

Written from the memory and point of view of Lynn Reynolds, the book tells many histories in a side-by-side chronological fashion with the story of the Reynolds family presented in one font, maple syrup industry history in another font, and general local, Wisconsin, US, and World history presented in a third font. For the maple historian the book is chock full of names, dates and descriptions of events in the history of both the Wisconsin and North American maple industries. The Reynolds sections of the books recount the interesting growth of the Reynolds company as maple industry juggernaut despite of being located in north central Wisconsin, far from new England or Quebec.

Lynn Reynolds was not a shy man nor one to temper his opinions when they mattered to him, so unsurprisingly the book does suffer from a bit of Reynolds exceptionalism, but in all honesty, that is not without some degree of merit, since the Reynolds family was very influential and the Reynolds Sugarbush was pushing the scale of maple operations at that period in maple industry history. If you can find a copy of this book snatch it up immediately. I have used my copy so extensively for reference I even built my own index for easier use, available here. My copy has seen so much use (in spite of being purchased new) that it is coming apart at the binding, so maybe at some point in the future I will scan the whole book and seek permission from the Reynolds family to make it available here.

Third in this list is the book Maple Sugaring In New Hampshire by Barbara Mills Lassonde. Published in 2004 by Arcadia Publishing as part of their Images of America series, this book is still in print and available at the Arcadia Publishing website. Like all books in the Images of America series, Maple Sugaring in New Hampshire is a photo history book with hundreds of great images and accompanying captions tracing the history of maple production in New Hampshire from the colonial days up into the 21st century.

Lastly, is the very well researched book Spotza, Keelers, and Stirred Sugar: The Legacy of Maple Sugaring in Somerset County, Pennsylvania by Mark Ware. Released in 2006 by the Historical and Genealogical Society of Somerset County, this well illustrated book presents years of research on the methods, material culture, and economic history of sugaring in a small but very active corner of Pennsylvania. With his position as the Executive Director of the Somerset County Historical Center, Mark Ware has taken the time to look deeply into the records, family histories, and artifacts and antiques. That knowledge is shared both in this book and in the exhibit of reconstructed 1860s sugar camp at the Somerset Historical Center. This book can be purchased online from the Somerset Historical Center website.