Ice Cutting

This topic came from a recent entry in the Rewrite article in our local paper reporting that on January 11, 1890, the folks in the Elko area were apprised of the fact that several men and their teams (of horses, I presume) were out cutting ice for the hotels and saloons in town. It was also mentioned that it was a pretty cold job. The temperatures mentioned during the preceding week had lows ranging from -26 to -42 with a “high" of -6 during those subzero days. Apparently, the temperatures had moderated some in order for the men and their animals to withstand the weather and the cold work.

I haven’t done any research at the Museum to know where the town's ice house was located for the storage of these ice blocks, but I would hope it was fairly close to the river where the ice was cut.

The whole idea of cutting ice in the winter to be used in the summer is a totally foreign idea to children and young adults in 21^st century America. Actually, it’s a foreign idea to me and I’m much older than the ages I just mentioned. However, history books will tell us that electricity in everyone’s home didn’t come about until, in some cases, the 1940’s and 1950’s. Our refrigerators were once called ice boxes – for a good reason. That’s what they were. They held a block of ice (purchased from the iceman or if you lived in the country, you fetched it from your ice house). The coolness from the ice kept food from spoiling.

 My father had memories of cutting ice back on the farm in Missouri although his memories would have come from experiences closer to the 1920’s. The method he spoke of was to score the ice with some type of sharp implement, then I guess they would drill holes so that the ice saws could grab hold and cut the ice into blocks. How they kept hold of the ice blocks once they were cut, I don’t know. I think I remember seeing some large “tongs” out in our garage at the farmhouse and Dad said those were ice tongs. The ice blocks were stored in heavily walled structures with sawdust between layers of ice and covering the ice as the sawdust acts as insulation.

I searched the Net and discovered a fascinating post on Gizmodo about Harvesting Ice in Maine. The activity is a community activity which occurs every January and/or February and the article not only gives the history of ice cutting or harvesting, but also includes photographs of each step needed in the process. Truly fascinating. The group sells a 300 pound block of ice for $1 to sports fishermen who say the ice lasts for about a week because it doesn’t have air bubbles in it like artificially made ice does.