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After a field had been marked and plowed, channels were opened and a few blocks were cut out by hand to open the field. Large sheets were pried or sawed free and floated toward the icehouse, where the sheets were again sawed into more manageable blocks.
The most prominent tool manufacturers of the era were W.T. Wood & Co. of Arlington, Mass., and Gifford Brothers of Hudson, N.Y. Later, the two companies merged, creating the Gifford-Wood line of tools.
But as the natural ice business began to wane, the need for tools and equipment also disappeared. Most manufacturers went out of business by the 1920s.
An Ice Harvester's Story
Three men cut the ice, loaded it onto a lumber wagon with tongs and rope, and then transported it a mile to the icehouse. Blocks were packed in sawdust in a 10-foot deep earthen cellar covered by a log icehouse. The ice lasted through the following summer and fall.
Cutting ice off Box Elder Creek south of Nemo, S.D., during the 1930s and 1940s was the only means of providing refrigeration for the family icebox and the pop cooler at the filling station next door. Rural electrification didn't come to this remote part of the Black Hills until the early 1950s.
Delivery
As summer approached, ice delivery shifted into high gear. The iceman (usually last winter's coal man) peddled ice door-to-door using a horse and wagon. Housewives left a sign in the window, letting the iceman know how much he should deliver. Ice wagons had a scale mounted at the rear, but icemen - adept at guessing the weight of an ice block - seldom used them.
Children loved to see the iceman come by on a hot summer day. Their mothers, though, greeted his arrival with mixed emotions: the delivery inevitably resulted in a wet, muddy mess on the kitchen floor.
The End of An Era
The switch to manufactured "artificial" ice was gradual. Early ice-making technology was inefficient and slow to develop. Natural ice was marketed as a superior product, even though it was often cut from contaminated bodies of water. But by 1920, with increasing availability of electricity and a greater demand for refrigeration, natural ice could no longer compete with artificial ice.
As with each advancement in technology, the "old way" is put to rest. As with the horse-drawn plow and the steam tractor, the natural ice industry succumbed to greater demands and improved technology. Another era in our history had ended.