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The Ice Industry in the Town of Schodack

For a little over fifty years the harvesting of ice from the Hudson River employed many seasonal workers from the Town of Schodack. The story of the ice industry can be told by a series of photographs shown below from the archives of the Historical Society of Esquatak, our local historical society. From the early 1870s into the 1920s ice was harvested from the Hudson River from just north of Poughkeepsie, where the river water was no longer salty, to the Albany area. The ice was used to meet the demands of people and businesses in the New York City area.

Large ice houses dotted the landscape along both shores of the Hudson River. In our area there were between 11 and 13 ice houses mostly on the west side of the river with two or three houses on the islands offshore between Castleton and Schodack Landing.

Ice harvesting began in January of each year or when the ice was 10 to 12 inches thick. The work lasted about six weeks or until the ice houses were filled. The men (and some boys to tend the horses) worked ten hour days, seven days a week for a wage of little more than one dollar a day. An ice house is shown in the right background of this picture. This picture (right) shows a crew getting ready to start work for the day. The first step in preparing to harvest the ice was to plow the snow from the area.

 
The ice field was measured and then scored for harvest. Usually a field of 100 feet by 100 feet was cleared off for cutting and subsequent harvest. The ice was first scored by making parallel cuts 34 inches apart and about two to three inches deep in one direction with a horse driven plow. Scoring lines were then made at right angles to the first cuts.

 
After the scoring was complete the ice was cut in one direction by a horse drawn ice saw. The ice was then cut in the opposite direction following the scored lines but only cut about two thirds of the way through resulting in long chains of ice, which were gradually moved in open water canals to the ice house for storage.

 
As the ice chains neared the ice house the final cut was made with a hand held ice saw to form blocks approximately 34 inches by 22 inches. The ice was moved into the ice house by a steam driven endless chain "elevator" fired by a steam boiler. The entrance to the elevator was under water, and the ice blocks were poled on to the elevator.

 
When the ice got to the top of the elevator the blocks were moved along gravity fed ramps to their final storage location. The ice was insulated by sawdust between the individual blocks and the layers. When the ice house was full, it was insulated by salt hay and additional sawdust and sealed with boards on the exterior to protect the ice from the weather. Companies generally harvested at least one-third more ice than they anticipated selling because of losses due to melting during storage and shipping.

In mid-March when the need for ice began, the ice was gradually transferred into barges using the same endless chains in reverse order. The summer crew was much smaller than the winter harvesting crew as fewer people were needed to move the ice into the flat-bottomed barges. Also, farmers who worked in the winter were no longer available to work in the summer months. The holds of the barges could carry from 400 to 1,100 tons of ice. The family of the barge owner lived in the engine house on the deck of the barge. While not shown in this photograph, later barges had windmills on the top of them to provide power to pump out water from the hold as the ice melted. A tug boat would haul a line of barges down the river to the New York City area for distribution.

Once the barges reached their destination they were unloaded by derricks to over 700 ice dealers who backed up their wagons to receive the ice for distribution to their local customers. This early newspaper advertisement extolled the merits of the ice wagons for sale. The last line in the lower left of the advertisement is somewhat amusing. Brakes for the ice wagons were optional for an additional ten dollars!

After the development of artificial ice in the 1920s and refrigeration in 1932, the demand for river ice dropped off dramatically. The ice harvesting declined very rapidly during this time until it ceased all together. Some of the massive ice houses were later used as mushroom "factories" for a few years, but most of the ice houses were taken down, or they fell into decline and later burned until there was no visible sign left of this once thriving Hudson Valley business.

An excellent series of newspaper articles on the ice industry was written in 1983 by Alice Walsh, former Castleton Village Historian. These articles provided much more detail than provided here and included names of local people involved in the ice industry and their recollections. Copies of the articles are available in the Town of Schodack Historian's office.

November 2007

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Diane Hutchinson,
Town Historian

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