Late 19th to Early 20th Century Ice Plow

When we talk about harvesting, you might not imagine we would include ice among the crops being harvested.  Ice, however, was an important resource for farmers and others on the North American prairie who wished to keep meats and other foodstuffs from spoiling too quickly during the warmer months of the year.  A farmer might harvest his own ice from a nearby lake or river during the harsh winter months, or he might purchase ice from a company established to cut and sell it.  By obtaining ice and storing it in an underground room insulated with sawdust and provided with a drainage system to let out the water, a farmer had ice to keep his meats, dairy products, fruits and vegetables fresher longer.  If a farmer could store large amounts in the underground room, he might remove smaller pieces over time to refrigerate the family’s food for a day or two in a smaller ice box.  Depending on how much space there was and how warm the storeroom got, the family might have ice for several weeks or even months.

Once the ice in the storeroom melted, the farmer and his family might be able to obtain ice that had been stored by companies for future sales or by companies who imported ice from higher elevations or from colder regions in Canada and Alaska.  By providing their frozen product to the larger society, ice harvesting companies also allowed meat packing plants to keep their meats cold, fishermen to bring in larger hauls from lakes and oceans, shipping companies to transport certain cold and frozen foods across longer distances, and breweries to brew beer all year round.  Providing ice to families and businesses alike long before the widespread availability of artificial ice makers and refrigerators, ice harvesters played an important role in rural and urban life on the North American prairie throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century.

Although there were many things to consider when harvesting ice, including water currents, we will briefly discuss the process in simple terms here in order to give a general impression of what it was like.¹  To begin with, the ice harvesting process often involved the use of a variety of tools, including an ice marker or an ice plow like the one seen here at Stuhr Museum, an ice saw or ice chisel or fork bar, long and short ice hooks, grapple jacks, ice tongs, hoisting tongs, drag tongs, and edging tongs.  Depending on the size of the harvest, anywhere from a couple dozen to a couple hundred people may be involved in the process.  After one worker measured to make sure the ice was thick enough to hold its shape while being moved around, other workers used an ice marker and/or an ice plow pulled by a horse to mark off a grid on the surface.²  After marking and scoring the ice to delineate the separate pieces, called ice cakes, workers used ice saws, ice chisels, and fork bars to break the ice cakes apart.  The workers then used long and short ice hooks to guide the ice to a ramp at the shoreline.  Once the cakes were at the base of the ramp, workers used a jack grapple hooked by rope to one or two horses to pull the cakes up to a platform.

On the platform, another worker used ice tongs to place the ice into a wagon to be hauled to the storage building.  Horses towed the wagon to storage where another horse might pull the ice up to a second floor with hoisting tongs and a pulley.  Inside the building, workers used drag tongs and edging tongs to guide the ice into their storage places.  If you wish to see footage of a similar ice harvesting process at Pocono Manor, Pennsylvania, filmed in 1919, click or touch here.  Although it played an important role in the ice harvesting process somewhere, Stuhr Museum’s jack grapple unfortunately has no markings to show us who made it, and we have no record of where it was used.³

Notes

¹ For a much more detailed description of the ice harvesting process, including images of an even wider variety of tools which could have been used, see Theron L. Hiles, The Ice Crop: How to Harvest, Store, Ship, and Use Ice. A Complete Practical Treatise for Farmers, Dairymen, Ice Dealers, Produce Shippers, Meat Packers, Cold Storers, and All Interested in Ice Houses, Cold Storage and the Handling or Use of Ice in Any Way (New York: Orange Judd Company, 1893), pp. 14-42.

² According to Hiles, The Ice Crop, p. 21, a general desired thickness was fourteen inches, although expectations varied depending on the region.  For example, parts of Ohio tended to harvest ice about six inches thick, areas around Chicago and Omaha eight inches thick, parts of Maine sixteen inches, parts of Minnesota twenty inches, Lake Superior off the Wisconsin coast thirty inches, and the area around Winnipeg, Manitoba, forty inches.  Hiles adds that the 40-inch thick ice can keep for the entire year.

³ In south central Nebraska, Crystal Lake, south of Hastings, was created by the Crystal Ice Company in 1893 for ice harvesting.  The Illinois State Museum has information on harvesting ice, especially on the Illinois River, which you can access here.  A wonderful online source (in pdf format) for ice harvesting in the 1800s is provided by the Carriage Museum of America in Lexington, Kentucky, which you can access here.