Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve - Virtual Tour Icehouse (U.S. National Park Service)

North view of the icehouse. Summer

North view of the icehouse.
Winter

West view of the icehouse with cistern in front. Winter 2002

The icehouse was built of native limestone in 1882. Originally the doorway was located on the north face of the building. Placing the entrance here denies sunlight from reaching the ice. Some icehouses placed the entrance several feet off the ground, because cold air flows downward. An entrance reaching the bottom would allow this cold air to escape.

The winters were colder in the 1800s and the Cottonwood River would freeze solid. There was an ice cutting factory on the river and large blocks of ice were cut and sold. They were then carried, by wagon, to the ice house for storage. Try to imagine the blocks of ice that would be stored in this icehouse. The ice was most likely cut from the Cottonwood River south of the Spring Hill Ranch.

"Icehouses, once common enough on the better farms of America, have with few exceptions. long ago been made over into extra chicken houses or split up into kindling wood....To put up ice one must have good water - a pond or lake, a river or stream with a sizable pool of deep water. Many of the first farm ponds were built, not to supply water, but to supply ice. The ice harvest usually came toward the end of January or early in February, when the ice was about ten inches thick. The best temperature for cutting was a few degrees below freezing, so the water would freeze quickly on the cakes after they were taken out of the pond. but it seemed that it never was a pleasant twenty-five degrees; frequently it was zero or below. Men did not dare to wait, for too often a zero spell in the Northern states is followed by a thaw which would spoil the ice. After the snow was scraped from the area, the ice was plowed out. The ice plow was a weighted, horse-drawn contrivance with a row of sharp teeth which cut a narrow furrow six or seven inches deep. A marker scratched a line for the next cut. The plow was run one way over an area, then over the other at right angles, plowing out a checkerboard pattern of cakes of a more or less standard size, 22 inches by 12 inches, weighing about a hundred pounds. Sometimes the cakes were broken apart with a boar, but particular people liked to have the edges smooth, so the last two or three inches were sawed by hand. The ice saw was straight-bladed and four or five feet in length with a handle like a lawn mower. After the cakes were cut, they were poled through the dark water to shore. Here a long plank sloped into the water; the trick was to give the cake of ice enough momentum so that its weight would carry it up where someone with a pair of tongs could snag it..... the ice was hauled to the icehouse on two-horse bobsleds. Layer by layer the old weathered icehouse was filled. A sprinkling of dry sawdust was scattered between each layer of cakes. This made them easier to separate when they were taken out. A two-foot-wide layer of sawdust was tamped lightly between the ice and sides of the building. After the last layer was pushed up the long, oak plank, the whole heap was covered a yard deep with sawdust. Some farmers not only cut ice for their own needs, but for neighbors. The going price was five cents a cake. But the thrifty farmers wanted their own ice-cutting equipment. It took an average of three hundred cakes to last a family through the summer; at five cents a cake this was fifteen dollars, one-third the price of a good cow....No one knows when a farsighted colonial farmer first conceived the idea of storing ice to use in hot weather. Old records reveal that many icehouses were built in New England after the Revolution." (Taken from The Good Old Days, Ice Harvest, R.J. McGinnis, F. & W. Publishing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio, pages 121-122.)