For thousands of years, the only way to get ice was to harvest it and ship it.
And up until the 1960s, Northeastern Iowa was one of its main exporters.
To celebrate its history, Lansing, Iowa has started holding an ice harvesting demonstration
every February to show the current generation all the work that went into getting ice before
the advent of the freezer.
When it comes to celebrating a community's heritage most areas would opt for warmer temperatures
and clearer skies.
But for Lansing, an Iowa town in the farthest northeastern reaches of the state, to properly
represent its history, observance must be made at the coldest time of year.
So come February, Lansing hosts its annual Winterfest, embracing its frigid legacy with
sleigh rides, snowshoe hikes, ice carving and chili cook-offs.
But in recent years the town has included a piece of area history that has almost been
completely forgotten, ice harvesting.
In the late 1800s until the mid-1960s, Lansing was a well-known harvester and exporter of
block river ice.
With the railroad carving right through town, an ample supply of frozen fresh water, come
winter Lansing was an ice harvesting powerhouse.
The ice field got very large.
It would be twice the size of a football field and it was a big production, three or four
trucks hauling steady.
Alright, go, go, go, go!
It employed a lot of farmers, construction workers and grocery stores each had their
own ice crews.
There were several ice houses around town.
Seven big ice houses, they would hold several tons of ice.
Oh, many, many tons.
Married more than 50 years, Karen and Gary Galema are two of the few remaining connections
to this piece of Lansing history.
I got in on the last harvest that they did commercially in the winter of '64, '65.
I was a truck driver through here and her dad ran the local fish market.
And so between Christmas and New Year's holidays there's no fish sales, so her dad asked if
I could come over and drive a truck for him to haul the ice from the ice field down to
the ice house.
So I have a little bit of an idea what we're doing out here.
Go, go, go, go, go, go!
I don't do much work anymore.
I just kind of watch and tell them what they're doing wrong, but I let them try it first.
In spirit, the demonstration showcases what went into ice harvesting.
On a smaller scale, there's the same tools and basic processes.
A grid is plotted on the ice with the sleigh blade and saws
Followed by long metal picks breaking ice blocks,
loading them onto a truck with tongs or a pull-in rope.
Unlike an actual harvest that was dangerous, nonstop work, the demonstration is much more
about fun.
And even a few activities that are decidedly not traditional.
While the demonstration is all about smiles and a fun winter activity, for years ice harvesting
was serious work and a means of making a living.
Familiar faces seen in this 1948 crew are Jack Erlich, Ben Sweeney, John Prodsman --
For generations, this was the only way to get ice.
Hoards of men would descend onto the frozen banks of the Mississippi and area lakes to
saw, pick, pry and load up block after block of crystal clear ice.
Almost all the little river towns along here had ice crews, Harper's Ferry, DeSoto.
I remember when we used to ship ice out east, the rail cars weren't refrigerated and they
packed them in river ice because we had a big crusher at the fish market, you'd still
have chunks of ice this big and they would hold on the fish all the way into New York
or into Chicago or out to the West Coast.
Each block of ice weighed several hundred pounds.
In its heyday, ice harvesting provided a good income as well as barns full of ice blocks
that would stay frozen year round for keeping meats and dairy, as well as fisherman's needs.
And while today's demonstration looks strenuous, it's nothing compared to what actual ice harvesting
demanded.
Before these gas powered ice saws, we had a horse drawn ice cutter that the horses would
pull across the ice but you had to make three or four trips with that because you could
only cut about an inch at a time to get deep enough to where you could get it off.
When you have nice smooth frozen ice two people can just pull that saw, they don't really
pull it, it will pull itself, drag it to the other end back and forth all day long.
It was a tough life, it was a hard life and you learned early on that you had to be hard
to survive.
It's important that the kids realize what is involved and there's nothing like first-hand
experience.
Like so many skills and trades before it, ice harvesting is an industry that in our
modern, refrigerated era is commercially impractical.
Now the backbreaking, freezing cold work of harvesting has been retired to museum shelves
and history books.
Still, it's demonstrations like Lansing's Winterfest that helps connect the next generation
with its past.
I do a lot of classes that come through the museum and when we get to the ice box they'll
say, "what did they need an ice box for?"
And it's a simple answer.
Well, you know they didn't always have ice makers in every refrigerator.
So that is where it came from, it came from hard work, sacrifice,
and it came from the river