Ice Houses – Ice Harvest From Local Ponds Was Essential For Homes And Businesses

By DEBORAH G. SCANLON

These days, the prospect of good ice on local ponds makes many of us excited to go skating. In the early 20th century, though, it was a major concern, as an abundant ice harvest meant refrigeration for homes and businesses.

The Falmouth Enterprise reported regularly on the ice situation.

“This has been a frigid week. The local ice dealers have been harvesting a good crop of ice this week. We can now anticipate cold soda and delicious ice cream for the coming summer,” the Enterprise reported in February of 1911.

In 1897: “The recent cold snap gave the icemen a chance to fill their ice houses and that means that next summer will not see a repetition of this year’s ice famine. The ice harvest was 8 to 10 inches thick and of good quality.”

Sometimes the report was just for reassurance. From 1909, “It is too soon to begin to worry about the ice crop. The same mild weather conditions were experienced a year ago and yet plenty of ice was harvested in February.”

In the early 1800s, Frederic Tudor and Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth of Boston developed techniques for ice harvesting and storage. By the mid 1800s, fish markets and other businesses were using harvested ice, and soon after homeowners did too, using an ice box that was an insulated container with separate compartments for ice and food.

In Falmouth, there were ice houses at Shivericks and Weeks ponds in Falmouth center, Crockers Pond next to Bourne Farm in West Falmouth, Mill Pond in East Falmouth, Miles Pond (Ice House Pond) in Sippewissett, Bourne and Ice House ponds in Waquoit, and Trout Pond and Flax Pond in North Falmouth.

Several large estates had their own ice houses. The Fay family had one on Nobska Pond, for example, while the Emmons family had one on Oyster Pond.

The largest commercial ice house in town, Falmouth Ice Company, was on Shivericks Pond, behind Eastman’s Hardware and the present Falmouth Chamber of Commerce, where Katharine Lee Bates Road and the parking lot are now.

Clarence Anderson, who was born in 1912, recalled his days harvesting ice in Falmouth in a 1984 Woods Hole Historical Museum interview published in the museum’s journal, “Spritsail,” in 2001.

At Shivericks Pond, Mr. Anderson recalled, “The people involved would get out their ice plows and a horse. They would go down a strip of ice with the horse dragging the ice plow, which would cut a slot in the ice probably half the thickness of the ice, perhaps six inches deep. Then we would repeat the operation back and forth over a given distance of perhaps 200 feet.” Then “it was time for a man and a saw. One man stood on top of the ice and worked the saw up and down. He finished cutting through those slots that had been cut with the horse and plow.”

Mr. Anderson explained that the slab of ice would be floated over to the ramp of the ice house, where a worker would use an ice breaker to cut it into smaller pieces. At a commercial ice house like the one at Shivericks Pond, there was a conveyor belt with spikes to bring it inside. At smaller ice houses, the ice was loaded into the building with block and tackle.

“There was many a man when they were cutting ice that fell in the pond because he’d cut through somewhere and the ice would give way underneath him and down he went. It was just one of those things; you weren’t greatly concerned about it. You just got up and went home and changed your clothes and went back to work,” Mr. Anderson said.

Mr. Anderson also remembered that at Shivericks Pond, “everyone, young and old,” skated: “We’d have this great huge section where the ice had been all cut out and open water and you were skating right along the edge of the water. People were skating there all day long while ice was being cut.”

The ice houses to store the ice were built with a 12-inch space between the outside and inside wooden walls, filled with sawdust for insulation. The loading doors started at ground level and extended to the top of the roof. There were no windows. There were drain holes at ground level for water from melting ice to leave the building. The ice blocks (also called cakes) were packed tightly together. On top of each layer of ice blocks there was a thin layer of straw or sawdust to keep the layers of ice from freezing together.

Ice delivery began in the spring. The iceman, along with his horse and wagon, would look for the ice card in the windows of the houses on his route, with the quantity of ice noted at the top. The ice deliverers used tongs to carry the ice into the house and place it inside the ice box.

The hollow walls of wooden ice boxes were insulated with sawdust, cork or dried seaweed and lined with a non-corroding metal like tin or zinc. Cold air inside the ice box circulated around the food on nearby shelves, allowing it to stay fresh. Some models had spigots for draining ice water from a catch pan or holding tank.

Many of us remember the ice house that was on Miles Pond (Ice House Pond) on Sippewissett Road, where we eagerly anticipated skating every year. Sam Cahoon bought the land next to the pond in 1928 and built a new ice house. Later, he expanded the ice house with a plant that made ice, due to several winters without suitable ice on the pond. A dispute with the neighbors over noise made by the diesel engine delayed operations for years. The ice was used in Woods Hole at Sam Cahoon’s fish market, for trucks delivering fish and for fishermen to keep their   catch fresh while at sea. The ice house ceased operation in the early 1960s, and in 1966 it was destroyed in a fire, which the Enterprise reported was fed by the sawdust insulation.

The increased use of electricity in homes that allowed refrigeration gradually meant the end of the ice business as it existed. We still enjoy skating on these ponds, though, and imagining the old days of ice harvesting.