History of the Vereinigung Erzgebirge Pool

About 50 yards in from County Line Road, the creek was dammed up to make a swimming hole. The water was about three feet deep. It was cold and shady, and only a few brave, or foolish, kids went in the water. Arno Vorwerk was instrumental in having a swimming pool built. This pool consisted of three concrete walls and a mud bottom. Just inside the Club property, the creek was diverted into a sluice, which filled the pool. It took approximately two weeks to fill the pool. The following year, the pool was cemented all around. A well was dug, and the pool was filled in only two days. This pool had unpainted walls and bottom. In time, algae built up and had to be cleaned two or three times a season. About 3:00 in the afternoon of cleaning day, the pool was closed and started to drain. The entire pool and bottom had to be scrubbed by hand. The cleaning crew just kept circling the pool, using scrub brushes and brooms, there was never a shortage of workers. The pool was kept sanitary by putting chlorine into the water, and a test kit was used to test the water. The design idea for the pool and pool house, were both taken from the original swim club in the Erzgebirge region of Germany, where our founding fathers emigrated from.

During a heavy rain, the entire pool would be under water. The creek was only 10 yards from the pool and made a sharp “S” curve, this backed up the water. The next year, the creek was straightened out, and now flows about 20 yards from the pool. There has never been another under water pool again.
Having a public pool meant having lifeguards. All interested men and boys were given rudimentary lifesaving lessons. A duty list of lifeguards was posted and followed. In the 1960’s there were a couple major changes made to the pool and surrounding area. The first being a new filtering system was installed, to help keep the water clear and clean (we still are using this filtering system today), the second was to put a fence to surround the entire pool area.

The 1970’s saw the start of our annual pool Labor Day party, still going strong today. In the 1990’s rule changes were made adding the Adult Swim and everpopular Playtime. In 1994 the pool was completely renovated in large part thanks to our members through donations and bonds, otherwise such a huge task would not been able to take place. With the new pool was added the features of having tables, chairs and umbrellas for our members comfort, plus the play sets for the younger children and a basketball net on the tennis courts much of which was donated by our members.

Since 1995 it has been an ongoing process of remodeling the pool house and the surrounding area to make it more accommodating for our members. Work was first started with the remodeling of the ladies locker room, then moved on to our new roof and siding for some of the pool house.
As we moved into the new century we replaced the deck for our porch. In 2003 we were able to remodel the other locker room, which was now turned into the new ladies locker room moving the men to the previous ladies locker room. With this remodeling we also added a new snack room, which is more accessible to our members.
As you can see in the years since the pool was redone we are slowly remodeling the pool house and the surrounding area as time and funds are available, but it will be a continuing process during the next couple years.

Of course all this work at the pool would not have been possible if not for the support of the Club, Executive Board, Board of Directors, and the different Committees and its Members, by making sure the funds and labor were available to complete them. Let us not forget all the members who in past or present have helped out not only with donations to the pool in ways of cash, materials (such as roofing, doors, windows, etc.), and equipment (such as power washers, tools, etc.), and last but just as important the many hours that our members have spent working at the pool.

So just keep an eye out at the pool to see the next project starting and hopefully all our members can enjoy their time relaxing and using the pool to its full benefit. Just a reminder to our members, with all the different projects as well as the normal maintenance and running of the pool, help to complete all this work is extremely needed.

Watch in the your Club Calendar and when you see work dates at the pool please consider donating a few hours to help out, thus helping us get further along with the projects needed to be done.