Ice Box

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I am 68 I have never seen one but when I was a kid my mom born in 1913 would tell me about the way they stored ice when she was young. She said they had dugout on a hill side with a sod covered roof on it. In winter months they would cut ice off the ponds and store it in the dugout. The dugout had a layer of straw on the bottom and sides more straw between layers of ice. This was done until dugout was full. She said they had ice the whole summer and fall. She was born and raised in West Virginia. They had an ice chest but no electric.

Mike
 
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A newer version of these would be great for decoration, as well as during power outages. We keep gallon sized containers in one of our garage freezers for whatever needs kept cold in the cooler in the summers. Power down, grab the food from the fridge, put that into the ice box as well as the ice. 3-4 days of fridge food while moving the frozen stuff into the coolers. Now we have to decide what gets tossed of what we can’t stow in coolers and/or eat.
 
I have a GE refrigerator made in 1947 still running, have it down stairs for whatever needed for. keeps things real cold and does not dry out food. only had to replace power cord, the old ones outer covering began to deteriorate, Freezer part is only big enough for ice cube trays or very small item to freeze
 
I remember the old ice house we had in our small town. Only went inside it once with my Dad when I was young. Had the floor divided into sections with the cooling coils as I remember. And I certainly remember buying block ice into my early teens. Everybody owned ice picks back then. The main holiday I remember for ice was Independent Day, my folks would fill up a wash tub with soft drinks and chipped ice and then more chipped ice for homemade ice cream. Glory days.
Amen, brother, Amen!
 
I have a GE refrigerator made in 1947 still running, have it down stairs for whatever needed for. keeps things real cold and does not dry out food. only had to replace power cord, the old ones outer covering began to deteriorate, Freezer part is only big enough for ice cube trays or very small item to freeze
I also have a GE refrigerator of the same vintage. It came with my house when I bought it. Except for power outages, it has never stopped running and works like a charm. I can not say the same about the big stainless steel monster in the kitchen now.
 
I grew up in a 1920s house and we used the Ice Box until Dad could afford a new marvel a refrigerator. Wow were we living large in 1950.
You sure brought back some old memories of the past. Right after WW2 we moved back home from Norfolk Virginia To N.C. With all the men coming home from the war housing was scarce so we moved into base housing. It had all the modern conviences, Ice box, pop belly coal stove and a shower. LOL! How time has changed every thing.!
 
When I went to work at the gas company I took a course called “Fundamentals of Natural Gas “. We learned that some French guy invented a compressorless natural gas/ammonia refrigerator system in the mid 1800’s. In the classroom they had a circa early 1900’s NG refrigerator that had never missed a day of service.
In the 1990’s we had customers that still had NG air conditioners.
 
I recall reading an article about ice during the Civil War there was a Col. Blanton Duncan who tried to get a contract with the Confederacy to supply ice. He was one of the printers of money for the C. S. Treasury. I don't know anything about lithography or the printing of money but Ice was used in the process. Something about the plates getting hot and having to be cooled down with ice. His idea was to construct shallow ponds "up in the mountains" and get the ice from the frozen ponds. Frozen ponds were very much present up north but in the South?
 
I posted on another thread about Thomas Jefferson and ice cream and that got me thinking. This would not be for long hunters and mountain men but would apply the American Revolution, etc. When did the ice box come into use? Mountain man Nathaniel Wyeth of Boston was in the ice business before going out to the Rocky Mountains so that would go back to the 1830's. Theoretically folks could have cut ice and stored in an ice house for hundreds of years but I haven't see any ice boxes, etc. in any of the old, historic homes I've seen. Only Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, he has a pit lined with brick, maybe 15' wide and 30 feet deep, enough ice storage to last the Summer.
Saw a great documentary a few years ago about a huge ice cellar that had been discovered under George Washington’s house. It has walls and a walkway floor made from fitted masonry stone. Great workmanship.
 
Saw a great documentary a few years ago about a huge ice cellar that had been discovered under George Washington’s house. It has walls and a walkway floor made from fitted masonry stone. Great workmanship.
If I remember correctly it had been filled in with dirt long ago, which prevented it’s discovery until recently.
 
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I recall reading an article about ice during the Civil War there was a Col. Blanton Duncan who tried to get a contract with the Confederacy to supply ice. He was one of the printers of money for the C. S. Treasury. I don't know anything about lithography or the printing of money but Ice was used in the process. Something about the plates getting hot and having to be cooled down with ice. His idea was to construct shallow ponds "up in the mountains" and get the ice from the frozen ponds. Frozen ponds were very much present up north but in the South?
North America was experiencing a minor Ice Age from the late 1600’s thru the 1820’s or so. Winters were especially rough from at least Virginia and further north. There are many contemporary written references about this, and the winter of 1777-1778 was particularly bad.
I am curious when Washington’s house was built. Guess I could look it up.
 
Rural Electrification was a work in progress into the mid 1960s and we used ice boxes until about 1960 in this area, I recall the line construction as REA extended one dirt road at a time and if a farmer bought a meter loop the REA workers would wire a pull-chain porcelain ceiling fixture and a single wall outlet in each room; all with exposed wire.
The 50# ice blocks were sold at some gas stations and some grocery stores, kept in "ice rooms". Delivered to the stores by truck loads, I never knew where they came from but suspect an ice manufacturer in a city somewhere. Those blocks were still in demand for a few years after electricity became common, as we smashed them in gunny sacks with axes to use in ice-cream freezers or camping ice chests. By the late '60s demand for 50# blocks was low enough that most places stopped carrying it.
 
During the depression, my step-grandfather was an ice man to keep food on their table. Hard work in a town like Hannibal with many hills. We don't see alleys in modern housing, but "back in the day", deliveries of ice and coal were frequent and alleys were common. Ice was cut from the Mississippi river, stored and sold commercially. Pollutants and disease from muddy river water doesn't sound very healthy nor appetizing to me.
 
That's why the ice was separate from the food in ice boxes. When in the Med with the Navy, they always cautioned us not to put ice in our drinks for the same reasons, ice there was handled pretty much like coal would be.
 
Near Grants New Mexico, in the broiling desert along the line of the Atlantic-Pacific Railroad there are lava tube caves that contained massive ice deposits. In the mid-1800s it was common for the locals to mine ice from these caves. A military fort sprang up nearby, and soldiers also mined ice from these caves.

There is plenty of archeological evidence, dating back 1,000 years, that the local Native Americans had built fires in the caves to melt ice and collect water.

The area is high desert, around 8,000 feet. Cold winter air and water settle in these low caves, and freezes. The thick lava insulates the caves from the summer heat. The most spectacular ice caves have constricted entrances that help block summer heat from getting into the caves.

The Candelaria family owned the largest ice cave, but they were unable to interest the state or federal government to protect the caves. So they built a tourist attraction. As far as I know, it is still in private hands. In 1987 the surrounding area was finally protected as a national monument and national conservation area. The Continental Divide Trail passes right through this cave area.

Reviewing historical records, almost all of the ice has melted in the last 40 years. Historical photos from the Candelaria ice cave show how dramatic the loss of ice has been since the invention of photography.

Ice loss. Same cave, 60 years apart. All of this ice is gone today.

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