~~Union was a bustling town with mills, hotels and factories. The station house itself was built in 1911. But aside from industry, the town's thriving business of between 1880 and 1930 was ice harvesting. Ice was harvested from nearby Lovell Lake, cut into 44-inch chunks and loaded into railroad ice cars directly from the lake. The ice was cut using a horse-drawn scriber.
And they cut a lot of ice. They would fill 20 train-car loads with ice and ship it south to Boston. Two ice companies building six, 3,000-ton capacity ice houses to store the ice before it was transported to Boston for use in making ice cream, cooling drinks and preserving food in a home's ice house, according to information provided by the Heritage Commission.
The exhibits at Heritage Park include a restored 1902 Russell Snow Plow on permanent loan from Acton, Maine, residents Terry and Patty Gammon. Built in British Columbia, the plow, which would have been pushed by a railcar to remove snow from tracks, is one of five of its kind. The plow cleaned tracks between Sanbornville and Wolfeboro for many years. It was retired in 1972.