We have an ice company in Los Angeles which proudly proclaims the fact that it was founded in 1860. AFAIK, in 1860 there was no electrical refrigeration, and L.A. didn’t even have a rail connection to the rest of the country, yet there was a company that sold ice. How was this possible? Was the business of an ice company limited to gathering and storing as much ice as possible during the winter so you could sell it to people during the summer? If so, how did they manage to bring the ice to remote places like Southern California when the journey overland or by sea took weeks if not months?
Or did they actually have some ice-making technology that could be used in temperatures above freezing?
I’m not sure when ice making technology came to be. There was an episode of The Day The Universe Changed that dealt with it, but it’s been a long time since that show has been on. ISTR tough, that ice making machines were developed in the latter part of the 19th Century.
I’ve heard that back east large blocks of ice would be cut during the Winter and it would be stored packed in straw insulation. I assume it could be transported that way? Perhaps ice could have been cut up in the San Gabriels and stored in straw? Or brought down from the Sierras?
This is true, apparently it used to be quite the industry in some areas. I was told as a kid that ice harvested from Lake Mahopac in Putnam County NY used to be shipped to New York City.
This site seems to back that up. It says it was shipped in special railroad cars. The distance involved would have been about 50-60 miles.
If kept insulated with straw, ice would last from winter through the summer, even before refrigeration. Obviously, there was some melting, but a railroad car full of ice could certainly go the length of a trip to LA, where it would be put into an ice house. They’d get the ice from the Sierras or whatever mountain range has enought ice to fill the boxcars.
Once refrigeration was invented, it was even easier to keep the ice.
If there was no easy rail access, it’s possible that there wasn’t any way to get ice in LA in 1860. Just because the company was in business that long doesn’t necessarily mean that they were established there.
I’ve heard that Yankee ice merchants (who did indeed just store it up from the winter) sold it as far away as India, so I wouldn’t imagine that LA would be a big problem. And if you can keep it for eight months just waiting for the buyers, what difference does it make if three of those months are on a ship?
Heck, well into the middle of the **20th ** century this was still done in the country. All winter ice blocks were sawed and cut out of the ponds, and moved to an “ice house” which was just a sort of barn, covered with hay, and stored through much of the summer.
When I was a kid in NYC during the 30s, ice was still delivered by horse and cart, and later in a small town in the country where I lived, this continued through WWII.
Each house had a triangular card with 25, 50 and 75 printed in each corner designating the size chunk you wanted in pounds. You placed the wanted number on top, so the iceman (who comith once a week) would know what size you wanted.
He had a leather sort of blanket on his shoulder, he used an icepick to cut out the right size block, grabed it with ice tongs, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and brought it into the ice box. That’s right, youngsters, many of use still did not have refrigerators (which is why many of us geezers still call the latter “icebox”)
The milk and the most perishable of stuff was put in the top compartment next to the ice, and the rest in the lower compartment where the cold air dropped down. Of course, no ice cream would last long.
The worst part was that the melting ice dripped down a tube to the bottom and into a pan. Most kids had the chore of emptying the pan daily so it would not overflow onto the floor.
And you think you’ve got it tough!
Then there was the coal delivery men too, but that’s another story…
Best link I could find, but apparently the ice industry in California was well enough established by 1872 that they were shipping product to Seattle. As many have speculated, the ice was harvested in the Sierras. And storage couldn’t have been too much of a problem, as the article says that it took them two years to sell off the initial 300 ton shipment.
This should answer some of your question(s). **History of NH3 as a refrigerant **
I can remeber that as a child I went to the “ice house” on the bank fo the Des Moines river to get ice for making ice cream in the 30’s. Climate changes and mechanical refrigeration did away with it by the late 40’s.
In a ravine adjacent to our property, you can still see the old remains of the icedam wall, where every fall my great-granduncle’s fishery workers allowed the ravine behind the dam to fill with water, and freeze in the winter. They’d cut up ice blocks all winter long, and use that to chill the freshly caught fish all year.
It was before my time, but I’m told that it wasn’t until after WWII that the family stopped making and storing their own ice.
The main beach in my town is named after the Ice House that used to stand there. Of course, up here there’s no real mystery about how they kept the ice cold. The mystery comes in how they managed to keep in business, as even now refrigerators are only really necessary a couple months out of the year.
As a minor side note, I’ve personally seen a sizable hill of snow in June, product of winter snowplows and trucks dumping their loads in a disused corner of a large parking lot. The road gravel picked up during the plowing formed a dirty cover of sorts that protected the mound from sunlight. It was constantly surrounded by a huge slowly-evaporating puddle and wasn’t completely gone until late August.
Keeping ice frozen isn’t really all that difficult. It just takes a lot of effort to collect the stuff, a lot of space to store it, and a lot of effort to deliver it.
At the Dutchess County Fair this past summer, they had a number of historic exhibits (19th-century General Store mockup, 100-year-old farm engines, etc.). One was a piece about ice houses. They included a photo of an ice house (a big barn, basically) that had burned down.
The ice stored inside took the better part of a year to melt, even after the fire around it, and even after standing completely exposed to the elements.
The Romans, even before Christ, would load wagons full of barrels, which in turn were full of water. They would take these wagons up into the hills surrounding Rome. The barrels wouls freeze, and they would take the ice back to the city, palace, or where ever it was needed.
Ice was a fantastic industry until modern refrigeration destroyed it.
I think ice could probably be brought from the Sierra Nevada range to Los Angeles by railroad. If blocks of ice were stacked in a pile in a boxcar and insulated all around the outsice with straw, sawdust or whatever, the outside blocks might melt some but the blocks inside are well insulated by the outside blocks. There would be some loss and the ice would be quite expensive, which it probably was, but it could be done.
I’ve read articles in old encyclopedias about the ice business, and it’s been pretty well covered here. Hamilton, Massachusetts apparently had a big business in it. They sold ice cut up from lakes – in the articles they have pictures showing the special saws used to cut up the ice into neat and regular blocks. Sawdust, they said, made the best insulation. And there was plenty of sawdust from the lumber mills in NH.
Interesting thread. I knew how ice used to be provided, but I had no idea the ice industry was still alive and kicking that late in the last century (though it makes perfect sense when you think about it). Though the posters are refering to the USA, I’ve no reason to assume it was any different over here, so I’m going to ask older relatives…
