December 27, 2017
Today’s program is title “Yes, It’s An Ice Harvest”. Until doing these programs and working at the
Museum, I never really thought about where people got their ice other than from
a refrigerator or freezer inside the house.
Keeping things cold and having ice available from trays or a dispenser
seemed to be the way it always was. Not
true!!!
In 1895, for
example, the ice harvest meant work for two or three weeks from 100 or more
workers in Junction City. The pay was
from $1.25 to $2.00 a day. This extra
income was helpful for families when they were short of money. There was a need for a big supply of ice that
year because the MK&T Railroad was getting more ice than they had gotten in
the past. Mr. J.A. Kean of Wreford got
the contract and it called for 80,000 to 100,000 pounds of ice. Thirty-five men were given employment. One
Monday, they filled twenty-four railway cars.
Two saws, called markers, were used to score the ice 2 to 2 ½ inches in
depth. After it was marked, two men with
long handsaws cut the chunks of ice off in strips. Then a heavy iron instrument, called a “spud”
with two prongs, was used to chop these strips into the desired size cakes of
ice. A scaffold with an elevator at the
side of the railroad cars carried the ice into place for its journey to the
icehouse where it was packed in sawdust to store through the winter.
This seems
way more complicated than the way we get our ice today, but that was the way it
was and this is one more way for us to realize how good we really have it.
That’s
today’s story on “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical
Society.
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