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Harvesting Ice from a Lake
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Ralph W. Brown
Hi Don,
Seems to me I’ve a photograph of ice harvesting on one of Maine’s rivers,
the Kennebec I think, but I don’t recall where. I think the photo was
taken in the early part of the 20th Century. I probably have it saved on
my computer, but I’ve yet to find it.
Pax,
Ralph
Brown
Portland, Maine PRRT&HS No. 3966 NMRA No. L2532 rbrown51[at]maine[dot]rr[dot]com From: Donald B. Valentine via Groups.Io
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2019 5:13 AM
To: main@realstmfc.groups.io
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] Harvesting Ice from a
Lake If someone is seriously interested in ice
harvesting it is still done on one day in February each winter on the pond
at the center of Brookfield, Vermont, the same
pond with the floating bridge, using the same equipment that was
used in years past. Many small country towns in
Northern New England had an ice house on such ponds, especially
if there were a creamery in town that shipped
milk by rail. The foundations of an ice house can even be found on
Towner's Pond in Melrose, Mass. barely outside
of Boston. We had one in Morrisville, VT between the Randolph Rd.
and Ward's Pond that lasted into the 1970's
though it had not been used for years. Even the pond is now gone as
it's first purpose was to power Leon Ward's
sawmill. After he passed away the dam was breached and a family of
Great Blue Herons that had lived there since I
was in grade school lost their habitat.
The Rutland RR. had a large ice house in
ALburgh, VT on the shore of Lake Champlain not far from the site of
the station in Alburgh where ice was cut and
stored for years as well as shipped to other railroad owned ice houses
on the line. The conveyor system for moving the
ice from the lake to the ice house was quite elaborate, judging from
the blueprints of it that I have.
Cordially, Don Valentine |
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Thomas Evans <tomkevans@...>
Ice harvesting & ice houses were also common on western lines before mechanical ice-making became common, especially with all the fruits & vegetables being shipped east from California.
The Santa Fe had a branch from Las Vegas NM up to Montezuma Hot Springs. Although it started to serve a resort, its main commodity was ice harvested from a series of ponds each winter for several decades & shipped all over the western lines of the Santa Fe. Natural ice was probably hard to come by along the Santa Fe's desert lines, so this high-altitude shady location may have been one of the few places to get it. A few of us have been investigating this operation over on the Santa Fe site recently. Tom |
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Donald B. Valentine <riverman_vt@...>
If someone is seriously interested in ice harvesting it is still done on one day in February each winter on the pond at the center of Brookfield, Vermont, the same pond with the floating bridge, using the same equipment that was used in years past. Many small country towns in Northern New England had an ice house on such ponds, especially if there were a creamery in town that shipped milk by rail. The foundations of an ice house can even be found on Towner's Pond in Melrose, Mass. barely outside of Boston. We had one in Morrisville, VT between the Randolph Rd. and Ward's Pond that lasted into the 1970's though it had not been used for years. Even the pond is now gone as it's first purpose was to power Leon Ward's sawmill. After he passed away the dam was breached and a family of Great Blue Herons that had lived there since I was in grade school lost their habitat. The Rutland RR. had a large ice house in ALburgh, VT on the shore of Lake Champlain not far from the site of the station in Alburgh where ice was cut and stored for years as well as shipped to other railroad owned ice houses on the line. The conveyor system for moving the ice from the lake to the ice house was quite elaborate, judging from the blueprints of it that I have. Cordially, Don Valentine |
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My hometown of Sterling MA had an ice house on the B&M line, and the ice was harvested from the
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local water reservoir ponds. I think this was quite common in the 19th century. On 9/22/2019 9:04 PM, rwitt_2000 via Groups.Io wrote:
Four photos of workmen harvesting ice from a ,lake. --
*Tim O'Connor* *Sterling, Massachusetts* |
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rwitt_2000
Four photos of workmen harvesting ice from a ,lake.
https://digitalcollections.detroitpubliclibrary.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A147968/datastream/IMAGE/view Caption: Four pictures of men cutting and transporting ice off of lake. Building looks unfinished. One shows ice being loaded on boxcar. Handwritten on mat back: "Ice house 'Lake Station' 1915. Claire County, Mich., P.M.R.R., Cranberry Lake." There are lots of railroad freight car stuff on this site. Try different search terms. Bob Witt |
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