Since the creeks in New Hanover Township flow into the Swamp Creek, which joins the Perkiomen Creek at Zieglersville, New Hanover is part of the Perkiomen Creek watershed and region.
At the turn of the last century, besides food, what was the major commodity shipped from the Perkiomen region to Philadelphia? It was, undoubtedly, ice.
Before refrigeration became common in the 1920s, ice harvesting, along with ice warehousing and shipping, were major industries on the Perkiomen Creek and its tributaries. Centered around Green Lane, ice harvest gave winter employment to hundreds of men from the region. The American Ice Company, Philadelphia, was the main employer.
The figures from that industry are astonishing. According to the Town and Country newspaper, in a particularly good year the American Ice Company’s warehouses held as much as 150,000 tons from dams at and near Green Lane. This figure seems unbelievable, but is apparently true: 150,000 tons – 300,000,000 pounds!
This company operated at least six plants with accompanying warehouses. The Hancock plant at Green Lane was 310 feet long, 90 feet wide and three stories high. It could hold 25,000 tons of ice! This was dwarfed by others near Palm and Hosensack that held as much as 37,000 tons each. Year-round, at least six boxcar loads a day were sent to the city. The lake at Montgomery County Park at Green Lane was originally built by the Knickerbocker Ice Company and a huge warehouse on the north side of the lake was accessed by a railroad siding that came from Green Lane.
What made the ice industry possible was the coming of the railroad near clear, unpolluted creeks suitable for daming. By the 1890s, the Schuylkill at Philadelphia was too polluted from upstream sources for the ice to be potable. The Perkiomen and its tributaries, such as Deep Creek, flowed through no industrial or residential areas and the ice was prized in the city for residential ice boxes and dozens of other uses from butchers to creameries to hospitals and even mortuaries.
Cutting ice with horses was not without its dangers. When I worked at Montgomery County Park in the early ’60s, I recall talking with a few “old guys” who told stories about when they worked packing ice there on Knickerbocker Lake. At that time, there was a long incline plane that held a chain conveyer belt that would carry the ice blocks to the top of the three-story icehouse where they would then go rattling down chutes to the packers toiling inside.
Well, as one story goes, occasionally the chain would come off the bottom sprocket wheels five feet under the frigid, icy water. Someone would have to go down into the icy blackness and put it back on. There was no shortage of volunteers because whoever did it got paid to warm up by sitting in the office for the rest of the day by the stove with a bottle of whiskey.
The story goes, too, of a horse and ice plow that plunged through thin ice and were lost. Years later, when the old earthen dam was breeched for the modern one to be built, found on the lake bed was a horse skeleton and rusted ice plow.
Locally, ice was harvested for local use on a much smaller scale. Most mill ponds and also dams erected just for ice harvest were common on local streams such as the Minister Creek. Packed in brick or masonry ice houses for creameries, butchers and farm butter making, well packed ice would last the summer season.
New Hanover resident the late Pete Ganovsky recalled making ice on Grubb’s Dam in neighboring Frederick Township and taking it by wagon to an ice house at Green Tree Inn. The mill-pond there was large enough to employ a horse and ice plow. It was heavy work, he recalls, in bitter cold. No conveyor here as the ice was slid up planks onto wagons. Each block weighed at least a hundred pounds and was handled by two men. As many as six wagons were employed at one time, he recalls.
The creamery at Young’s Crossing trolley station had a large ice dam on Minister Creek. The ruins of the creamery can still be discerned in the small patch of woods across Buchert Road from the New Hanover Township Fire Company. Creameries needed ice during the warm months to cool the milk brought by farmers every morning and to make butter.
Next week: Just exactly how did they cut, pack and ship 150,000 tons (!) of ice?
The Historian is produced by the New Hanover Township Historical Society. Call Robert Wood at 610-326-4165 with comments.
