Sand mining was common in the Port area, yet few realize that approximately one fifth of Baxter Estates was once used for sand mining. At the beginning of the 20th century the land behind McKee’s store was a sandbank as was the entire Village shorefront. A small dock, constructed over what is now the Village owned private beach, ran from the head of the excavation out to the station where the sand barges were moored, waiting to transport the sand. Travel on that section of Shore Road was slow, dusty, and very noisy. A.C. Bayles, one of Port’s large land owners in its early days, once said of the sand bank in Baxter estates, “This property, from long before my coming in 1869, presented an appearance as rough as one could imagine, being bounded from the north and south side of the Mill Pond… with a high bluff of loam and gravel covered with scrub oak, cedars and briars, some 50 feet or more high upon which no buildings could be erected. The entire farm was of little value, hardly able to pay taxes which, at the time, were small.” Mr. Bayles firmly believed that the sand mining operation made the development of Baxter Estates possible.
Today one of Baxter Estates’ biggest assets is the beautiful, hilly nature of the Village that was partially carved from a sandbank. In 1910, Charles (Buck) Hyde, one of the leading realtors of Baxter Estates’ home sites, described the Village as “… a private estate divided into home sites of exceptional desirability…in natural beauty, in location, this property is extremely fortunate.” The residents today would agree with those words from that early Hyde and Baxter promotion pamphlet. The pamphlet went on to describe Baxter Estates as “…an all year round home place, delightful in summer – yet the winter season holds much charm…the long rolling grades afford fine coasting, the lakes excellent skating.” Those were the days of sleighing down Central Drive and north onto Shore Road right to the Mill Pond. Local highways were not sanded, of course, so sleighing was a winter pastime for all ages. Skating on Baxter’s Pond was great fun, provided the skaters were willing to clear the ice first. Bonfires burned along the pond’s shoreline, illuminating the skaters by night. Unfortunately, skating on Baxter’s Pond was discontinued in the mid 1970’s.