Jan/Feb 2023During the hot summer months when people needed ice to put in their ice box to keep foods from spoiling, they would purchase ice from this icehouse.
The first section of this icehouse was built to store ice. The ice would be cut from any one of a few lakes in the area during the winter when the lakes were frozen over. The ice was then hauled by horse and wagon to the icehouse and loaded through the middle door. It would be packed with a little straw between the blocks to insulate them and to keep the blocks from freezing together. During the summer the blocks of ice would be removed from the small door to he left.
The walls of the icehouse are several boards thick to serve as insulation. The roof is built up from several layers of wood with the upper layer sticking out from both the front and back of the building.
The rest of the structure is a horse stable and/or a barn with a tack room at the north end.
I don’t know why all the large rocks are around the base of the building. They might have been to keep critters out, keep the weeds down, or maybe just to keep the building from blowing away. Then again it might have been a good place to store rocks, so people did not trip over them, or maybe they were just in the way when the icehouse was built.
