Nestled in the countryside of Erie County, Pennsylvania, Howard Falls holds a rich history that intertwines natural beauty, community, and conservation. One particularly remarkable chapter in its story began in the late 1930s, when the property briefly served as the site of the Erie County Sportsman’s League Game Farm.
Chapters One and Two Summary: How the Game Farm Began and The Sportsmen’s League Events at Howard Falls
In our first two chapters, we traced how the Erie County Sportsmen’s League established its game farm at Howard Falls in the late 1930s and quickly transformed the property into a hub for conservation, recreation, and public events. We looked at the League’s rapid growth, the development of the game farm itself, and the many ways Howard Falls became tied to Erie County’s sporting culture through bird propagation, hound trials, fundraising events, and public support. By the end of Chapter Two, it was clear that the game farm had become something much bigger than a rural experiment, setting the stage for the annual Field Days that would draw thousands to Howard Falls.
Chapter Three: The Annual Field Days at Howard Falls
By the late 1930s, the Erie County Sportsmen’s League had grown into one of the largest and most active sportsmen’s organizations in Pennsylvania. Its game farm at Howard Falls was well-established, and each September the League opened the property to the public for what became one of the county’s biggest annual events: Field Day.
But the story of the game farm was never just about Howard Falls.
The Erie County Sportsmen’s League was deeply tied to the civic and social life of Erie itself. In addition to its work at the game farm, the League organized events in the city, including fundraisers, public programs, and summer gatherings that helped keep the organization visible and financially supported.
For example, on Sunday, August 20, 1939, the Erie County Sportsman’s League planned a large public picnic at Waldameer Park for sportsmen and their families, a place that remains one of Erie’s most familiar gathering spots today.
The event was expected to draw a large crowd, including Pennsylvania Game Commission officials, with entertainment such as a band concert, fireworks, and a horse-pulling contest, along with the park’s amusement facilities. One of the more striking parts of the League’s 1939 Waldameer picnic announcement was its statement of purpose:
“As an affiliate of the National Wildlife Federation, the League supports the annual observance of National Wildlife Week and endorses the purpose of the federation to “unite the effort of all friends of outdoor America to the end that future generations shall have their rightful heritage of natural and wildlife “resources.” This means the conservation of, and the prevention of the illegal removal of trees, fish, birds, wild flowers, wild animals, and all other desirable outdoor life in Erie County.”
Nearly a century later, that same broader principle still feels just as relevant and, in many ways, remains at the heart of Howard Falls: preserving its natural and wildlife resources so that future generations may continue to enjoy them.
That same year, the League also used the Warner Theatre for a fundraising event, a reminder that the organization’s reach extended well beyond sportsmen alone.
The photos above show the packed Warner Theater as reported in the July 1939 Pennsylvania Game News magazine. The league had approached 3,200 members in total, and over 2,600 attended the motion picture show. Howard Falls may have been where the League raised birds and staged Field Day, but Erie was very much the city that helped sustain it.
Much of that growth came from a highly organized leadership group. Dr. John J. Koehler served as president, Karl W. Van Tassel as vice president, and Paul Howard as the League’s secretary. Together, they built both the game farm and the annual Field Day into something far larger than a typical sportsmen’s gathering.
Looking back through the newspapers, it is hard not to be struck by the scale of it all.
For a few years, Howard Falls was not just a place where pheasants were raised for release. It became the setting for an enormous public event that drew thousands of people into the country for shooting competitions, hound trials, races, demonstrations, and, at times, what the papers described as something closer to an outdoor carnival than a simple sportsmen’s gathering.
And for a brief stretch, the crowds just kept growing.
1939: A Record Crowd at Howard Falls
By 1939, the annual Field Day had clearly become one of the League’s biggest attractions. Held that year on Saturday, September 9, the weather was pleasant for the day. The Erie Daily Times reports that by noontime, the temperatures had reached 71 degrees and continued to advance to 75 in the afternoon.
Coverage leading up to the event promoted a full day at the game farm, with trapshooting, pistol shooting, bait casting, archery, and dog events. It was a carefully organized program led by Koehler, Van Tassel, and Howard, and designed not only for sportsmen but for families and visitors who wanted to see the game farm for themselves.
That year also saw the addition of “Fish-O,” a casting accuracy game described in the newspapers as the angler’s equivalent of skeet or trap shooting for hunters. Rather than testing marksmanship, Fish-O was designed to test fishing accuracy and casting skill, reflecting the growing popularity of competitive casting as a sport in its own right. Its inclusion at Howard Falls in 1939 shows how the League continued to broaden the appeal of Field Day and offer events that reached beyond traditional hunting competitions.
When the day was over, the Erie Daily Times reported a record crowd of between 12,000 and 15,000 people at Howard Falls.
That number is almost hard to imagine today.
To think of that many people making their way to Howard Falls in 1939, cars lining the roads, spectators crowding around the trap fields and race courses, gives a sense of just how big this had become. The game farm was no longer simply a working conservation project. For at least one day each year, it had become a regional attraction.
1940: Field Day Becomes a Weekend
If 1939 showed how popular Field Day had become, 1940 showed that the League was ready to make it even bigger.
That year, the event expanded into a full weekend, with programs planned for both Saturday, September 7, and Sunday, September 8. Newspaper coverage described it as one of the biggest weekends of the year for Erie County sportsmen, and the schedule makes clear that the League was trying to offer something for just about everyone.
Among the events advertised were coon, fox, and rabbit hound trials, trapshooting, pistol shooting, bait casting, archery contests, and the newly added whippet dog races, along with music and dancing. One article noted the installation of a public address system at the game farm so announcements could be heard across the grounds.
By this point, Howard Falls was hosting crowds large enough to require its own infrastructure. And like many large public gatherings of the era, the event was about more than sport. It was also about food, fellowship, and the kind of community traditions that helped draw people back year after year.
One of the recurring features of these field days was the ox roast, a centerpiece of many large public outings in western Pennsylvania and beyond during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Long before modern catered events or food trucks, event organizers turned to ox roast sandwiches. In the early days, the beef was slow-roasted over a great bed of coals, often overnight, and basted with the rich meat juices. As crowds grew, hundreds of pounds of “the choicest steer beef” would be roasted in large ovens and then transported to the events in “huge heat-retaining containers” to be served on rolls. Church picnics, fire department fundraisers, political rallies, and sportsmen’s outings all relied on ox roasts as a way to feed hundreds, or even thousands, of people at once.
At Howard Falls, it fit perfectly. The field day was not only a sporting event, but also a social occasion, and the ox roast would have added to the fair-like atmosphere that made the day feel like more than a club event.
Following the 1940 Field Day, newspapers reported that 15,000 people attended the weekend program. Photographs show spectators packed tightly around the events, confirming just how large the gathering had become.
By then, Field Day was not simply an outing for League members. It had become one of those annual events that connected the city and the countryside, Erie and Franklin Township, sportsmen and spectators. People may have gathered at Waldameer or downtown at the Warner Theatre for League events during the year, but each September, the center of it all shifted to Howard Falls.
1941: Still Huge, but a Slight Shift
By 1941, the format remained the same. The Erie County Sportsmen’s League again organized a full weekend Field Day at Howard Falls on Saturday, September 6, and Sunday, September 7.
The event was still a major draw, and the organization, led by Dr. Koehler and supported by Paul Howard, continued to promote both the game farm and its broader conservation efforts. But by this point, the program had grown well beyond its earlier focus on shooting and hound trials. Among the changes in 1941 was the addition of a parachute jump, a dramatic feature that would have been a major attraction for spectators.
But compared with the crest reached in the previous two years, the numbers suggest the first slight shift. After the 1941 Field Day, newspapers reported attendance of approximately 10,000 people.
That is still a remarkable number. But placed alongside the crowds reported in 1939 and 1940, it suggests that the steady upward climb may have begun to level off. At the time, no one likely would have read too much into it. The event was still a success. The crowds were still large. The League was still active.
But looking back now, it feels like a subtle sign that something was beginning to change.
The High Water Mark of the Game Farm
Taken together, the Field Days of 1939, 1940, and 1941 represent the high water mark of the Erie County Sportsmen’s League’s time at Howard Falls.
Under the leadership of Dr. John J. Koehler, Karl W. Van Tassel, and Paul Howard, the League transformed the property into something that is difficult to picture today.
Thousands came to Howard Falls each September not only to see the work of the League, but to take part in a full day and eventually a full weekend of activity.
The attendance numbers tell the story:
- 1938: estimated 10,000
- 1939: estimated 12,000 to 15,000
- 1940: reported 15,000
- 1941: reported 10,000
Those are extraordinary figures for a rural property in Franklin Township in Erie County.
But as hinted at in Chapter Two, the story was already beginning to shift.
The crowds were still coming to Howard Falls in 1941, but the broader world was changing quickly. The years that followed would make it harder to sustain the same kind of momentum.
For a brief moment, though, Howard Falls was at the center of it all.
Chapter Three captured the high water mark of the Erie County Sportsmen’s League’s time at Howard Falls, when annual Field Days brought thousands to the property and the game farm was at the center of some of the biggest public events in the county. But by 1941, subtle signs of change were already beginning to appear. Chapter Four will conclude the story of this era, tracing how the League navigated the years after 1941 as wartime pressures mounted and family expectations shifted.
Postscript: Behind the Lens
One name that appears repeatedly in the newspaper coverage of these field days is Frank Schauble (1896–1983), whose byline accompanied many of the photographs taken at Howard Falls during these years.
Frank Ticknor Schauble was born on May 25, 1896, to Louis Charles Schauble (1875-1955) and Pearl Margaret “Maggie” Irish (1878-1967). He married Dorothy E. Goodman (1897-1966) on July 15, 1925, in Erie, Pennsylvania. Frank would join his father and brother, Kenneth F. Schauble (1907-1965), in the photography business. Their studio, Schauble Studios, was located at 2101-2103 Peach Street and was “the largest and most completely equipped photographic studio in Northwestern Pennsylvania.”
In 1940, Schauble was described in the Erie Daily Times as “Erie’s leading photographer for 21 years,” and his work helps bring these events to life in a way the written record alone cannot. The crowded trap fields, the spectators gathered around the whippet races, the faces of some of the sportsmen, and the atmosphere of the day. Much of what we can picture now is because Schauble was there behind the lens.
We really cannot thank him enough for documenting these days at Howard Falls. Without those photographs, this chapter of the property’s history would be much harder to imagine.
This illustrates how photographers and hunters and fishermen were the original advocates to popularize and protect wildlife, natural habitat and scenic marvels like Howard Falls. What a remarkable history and journalism coverage.