The summer of 1939 was a hot one in Buffalo, which meant people were figuring out almost any way to cool off. By the hundreds, unofficial and unpatrolled beaches were filled with bathers making their ways into the cool waters of Lake Erie, and several times through the course of the summer swimmers lost their lives at beaches where there weren't lifeguards on duty.
The 1939 caption on the photo above called the place "the beach near the Canadian Pool terminal." The Canadian Pool terminal opened in 1925 as the Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator. It was later known as the Cargill Pool Elevator and was used for storing grain until 1975 – when Cargill loaded the conveyors, motors and transformers from its Buffalo elevators onto railcars and trucks and abandoned the facilities, owing $896,000 in delinquent taxes.
Today, the elevator towers over Gallagher Beach – which has gained a name but still doesn't allow swimming.
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Gallagher Beach is at the southern end of Buffalo Harbor State Park. At the end of the park closer to downtown is Times Beach Nature Preserve, another Lake Erie beach that didn't allow swimming in 1939 and doesn't now, either. For a short time in the early 1930s, however, the beach on the site of the old Sea Wall neighborhood became a free, municipal beach.
![Times Beach 1939.jpg](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=150%2C149 150w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=200%2C198 200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=225%2C223 225w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=300%2C297 300w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=400%2C396 400w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=540%2C535 540w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=640%2C634 640w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=750%2C743 750w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=990%2C980 990w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=1035%2C1025 1035w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C1188 1200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=1333%2C1320 1333w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/ce/fcebf2ee-3583-11ee-8298-83dfc04d00b9/64d18ead83dff.image.jpg?resize=1447%2C1433 1476w)
Sunbathers and cars on the sand at Times Beach in 1939.
The old Buffalo Times newspaper led the charge to create the public beach – which was officially opened to bathers in 1931, but was forced to close only a few years later in 1935. The same unique terrain that guards wetlands and wildlife today made it a natural collection site for the debris and pollution of Buffalo's industrial past as well as sewage and bacteria – and therefore unhealthy as a spot for swimming.
The third of the unguarded beaches spotlighted by The News was where a 19-year-old Columbus Hospital nurse had drowned the day before the photo was taken.
![Marine Airport 1939.jpg](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=150%2C160 150w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=200%2C214 200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=225%2C240 225w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=300%2C320 300w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=400%2C427 400w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=540%2C577 540w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=640%2C684 640w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=750%2C801 750w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=990%2C1058 990w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=1035%2C1106 1035w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C1282 1200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=1333%2C1424 1333w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/buffalonews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/8a/f8ace242-3583-11ee-91f5-37f3fb73df25/64d18ea66591d.image.jpg?resize=1393%2C1488 1476w)
Bathers at Buffalo's Marine Airport, 1939.
Then referred to as "the Marine Airport at the foot of Georgia Street," modern-day Buffalonians might question the past existence of both a Marine Airport and a foot of Georgia Street.
Today, Georgia Street runs from West Chippewa Street behind Hutch Tech to Niagara Street. At a time before construction of the I-190 and urban renewal plowed under the neighborhood behind Buffalo City Hall, Georgia Street continued from the west side of Niagara Street all the way to Lake Erie. Today, the spot is about where the breakwall ends near the southernmost tip of LaSalle Park.
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An ad from 1929.
Buffalo's 1929 opening of a Marine Airport was seen as "on the vanguard of a movement to utilize harbors, rivers and lakes to bring aviation to every doorstep in America." But it was only a matter of weeks before the October 1929 stock market crash that Colonial Western Airlines began offering two daily amphibious aircraft flights between Buffalo and Toronto. The route didn't last.
By 1935, The News was reporting indifference about the facility and that no planes had landed there during the first seven months of the year. As the decades wore on, the place was known more as a convenient place for Buffalonians to wash their cars – until it was wiped off the map as a part of the improvements to the Bird Island Pier in 1976.