A Dip in the “Cool Pool”

I don’t know about where you are, but here in Chapel Hill it’s hot. With a forecast high of 97 degrees and a heat index of around 105 degrees, I was trying to think of something “cool” to do this afternoon. If I were in Tarboro in the 1930s, I definitely know what I would do; I’d take a dip in the “Cool Pool.”

According to an entry written by Jaqueline Drane Nash in the recently published Encyclopedia of North Carolina, the Cool Pool came about after the Tarboro Town Council asked a Pennsylvania firm to install a refrigerating unit for the town pool. For a mere $2592, the residents of Tarboro enjoyed what “is believed to have been the first and perhaps only refrigerated outdoor pool in the country.” Now that is what I call North Carolina ingenuity (with a little help from Pennsylvania).