THE 1880’S IMMIGRATION AND OUTLAWS

No one is certain as to when the Ice business in Steamboat Rock actually began. In February of 1890, the Eldora Herald carried an article stating that the Creve Coevr Company of St. Louis was harvesting 50 to 60 cars of Ice daily above the dam. The article went on to say that 2000 carloads would be harvested that season. 

Other reports indicate that an ice business was started at Steamboat Rock by the Iowa Central Railroad Company in about 1893 with George Fisk as manager.

By January the ice in the river above the dam was generally 14 to 16 inches thick and the operation began. The ice would grow much thicker as the winter progressed.

First the river was marked into fields using a team of horses that were very sharp shod pulling an ice plow, which made grooves 1/4-inch wide and marking the field into 22 inch squares. This groove was plowed to a depth of 8 or more inches depending upon the thickness of the ice. The cut one way was completed with a hand ice saw which left the cakes joined together in long rows.

A crew of 25 to 30 men would then “spud” the cakes off and float them down the channel and up the loading chute.

Here they were pulled up the chute by a team of horses hitched to a “snatch cart” and loaded 8 cakes at a time into specially built racks on wagons. It would take about 12 to 15 teams to haul the ice to the railroad track where another crew loaded it on box cars. About 10 cars a day were loaded.

In addition to the ice that was shipped out of town in the winter the railroad company owned two ice houses one of which held about 35 carloads of ice. These were filled with ice in order to maintain a supply to be shipped out two or three carloads a week during the summer months. The ice that was shipped out at the time of harvest went to various destinations which had no facilities for harvesting ice.

The ice houses were necessarily large buildings since the storage of ice took a great deal of space compounded by the fact that it had to be insulated in order to keep it through the hot summer months. The material used for insulation was usually saw dust. Each cake was individually packed in sawdust. An extra thick layer of sawdust was put between the outside layer and over the top of the ice.