The Remarkable Story of Baker’s Lake

As we too see the hazy effects of the wildfires consuming the great forests of our Canadian neighbor, a long time ago, in the mid-1930s to be exact, Barrington was feeling the effects of a very stinky fire closer to home.

The origin of these smelly fumes was none other than the peat bog that had evolved after the swampy land alongside the railroad tracks, and south of what is now East Hillside Avenue, had been drained for farmland, first by Edward Castle and then Spencer Otis, Jr., followed by the Dahir family and then Jim Baker. In 1926, the Etters family built a house on the west side of this boggy expanse, and in the 1930s there were reports of fires erupting in the bog.

That is the official story as told by Dana Shadrick in his article on the history of the site for the Sesquicentennial Edition of Quintessential Barrington (2015). But for years before that, the stories had circulated among the old timers about how the fires had started.

At a meeting of the former Natural History Society of Barrington in the 1980s, there was a gathering of some of those old-timers, including members of the Dahir and Etters families, and, playing the part of mediator, because it was a lively meeting, Bill Klingenberg, Jr.

I have lost my notes of that meeting, but as I recall, some elaborate claims were made about who, and how the fires were started. Suffice it to say that after two or three years of this acrid blanket over Barrington, including, as it was reported at the time, smoke being sucked into the new air conditioning unit on the roof of the Catlow Theatre, it was enough.

Jim Baker called in two men to locate and remove the old wooden drain tiles that had been installed by the Otis family. He ordered the drains filled with concrete to stop the bog from burning. For his efforts, Baker is forever in the history and natural historical annals of Barrington.

Through years of good stewardship by local, regional, and state entities, most predominately for over 40 years Citizens for Conservation, Etter’s Slough, as it was known at the time of those acrid fires, is now one of the most important sites for nesting and migrating birds. A birdwatcher’s delight, and a wild birds’ sanctuary.