The Ice Pond and Ice Harvesting

Introduction

The Ice Pond is arguably one of the most scenic areas in the Great Swamp Watershed. Ice Pond has long been recognized as a habitat area of special significance. The pond itself, which is drained by Muddy Brook, is one of the largest bodies of water in the Great Swamp. It has been a fishing area for many years, though fishing has been limited by lack of access. Ice Pond lies between two ridges which rise over 400 feet. These forested hills, formerly occupied by the Wappingers Confederacy and Sachem Daniel Ninham, contribute to the great diversity of wildlife by offering a wide range of habitats for birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, insects, plants, and amphibians.

History of the Ice Pond

A black vulture soars over the Ice Pond

Bedded in limestone marble, bordered to the west by steep and rocky hills of tough metamorphic granite gneiss scraped bare in spots by the Wisconsin ice sheet, and to the east by amphibolite, lies a small lake known today as the Ice Pond. About 0.6 miles long and 0.2 miles wide, this natural pond is located in the southwestern corner of the Town of Patterson. A large stream flows northwest into the pond from the region around Brewster High School near Farm to Market Road, and many smaller spring fed streams feed into the pond from the surrounding hills. Muddy Brook drains the Ice Pond northward through a portion of The Great Swamp, eventually joining the East Branch of the Croton river near the Hamlet of Patterson.

From artifacts found at the Muddy Brook rock shelter, Cornwall Hill Estates and the Kessman Property, it's clear that prehistoric people were camping on these knolls, living under the overhangs of the surrounding hills and utilizing the food resources found in abundance in the wetlands. The earliest artifacts were projectile points which date back about 8,000 years. Fragments of Indian pottery were found at all the sites mentioned above and along the ridges that formed travel routes above the tangled wetlands. The Woodland Period began here about 1000-2000 years ago and marked the beginning of the use of the bow and arrow, pottery and the organized cultivation of corn, beans and squash. The Native Americans of this area were called the "River Indians" by Henry Hudson; we call them the Algonkian speaking people. The local groups probably consisted of 20 to 30 family members loosely known by the name of the area and joined in a larger assemblage or confederacy. The local Native Americans were members of the Wappinger Confederacy whose territory ranged from Northern Westchester County to Fishkill Creek. Their last sachem, or chief, was Daniel Ninham, who fought an extraordinary legal battle with the King of England and the Colonial Courts to try to retain his tribe's lands in Putnam and Dutchess Counties. With the Revolutionary War and the unsuccessful court ruling, the Confederacy ceased to be a presence in Putnam County. Its members joined other Indian groups and moved west.

Many of the European settlers in this region came from Cape Cod, Connecticut and even Long Island. One historian mentions Crosby, Mabie, Merritt, and Dykeman families living around the Ice Pond from the late 1700's. William Blake's History of Putnam County, N.Y., written in 1849, mentions that the Pond's "west bank forms the west line of the Harlem Railroad." Built in 1848-49, this is the older of the two rail lines that border the pond. In the early 1850's, the New York and New England Railroad (known today as the Maybrook freight line of the old New Haven Railroad) built a raised rail bed along the east side of Ice Pond. In 1912. engineers were told not to fire up their engines so that cinders would not fall on the forming ice.

Ice Harvesting at the Ice Pond

During the days of ice production, ice was cut in blocks and drifted under the Harlem tracks on the west shore through a cement lined channel. It was stockpiled in a huge ice house near the tracks before loading the ice onto railroad cars for the trip to New York City. Laborers used specialized ice saws and axes to cut large blocks from the frozen surface and pulled them along by horse through open water channels to the shore. The huge ice houses were built up around the ice blocks as they were stacked higher and higher. The ice was packed in insulating layers of sawdust or hay before being loaded into insulated cars for their trip south.

The workers were housed in a long frame building on the side hill to the north of the present fishing lodge. The building contained a kitchen, and at one end a make-shift jail to house rowdy workers after they celebrated payday! All that remains of the ice house is the impressive foundation that was still standing in the 1950's. The dormitory building is marked by piles of charred wood, broken pieces of pottery, rusted tinware, bedsprings, and a flight of steps leading up from the tracks. When the Ice Pond Corporation acquired the property, the members built a fishing lodge next to the Harlem tracks on the west side of the pond.


The Ice House at Ice Pond, seen in this early, undated, post card. Note the railroad car in the foreground that is dwarfed by the building.	A close-up look at the remains foundation of one of the buildings used during the days of ice production.

Ice was usually harvested once a season when the ice reached a certain depth. Farmers and local laborers found it a good way to earn some cash in the winter. Around 1900 a laborer could earn $1.25 a day and a man and his team $3.50 a day. It usually to 6 to 10 days to harvest the ice, cutting it into sections that were floated along a canal towards the sluice way where they were barred off into blocks that went up a conveyor into the ice house. The Ice house at Ice Pond is estimated to have been between 300-350 long, 200 feet wide and about 56 feet high. The Ice Pond's surface could produce 1 million cubic feet of ice with a crew of about 200 men, filling the ice house with about 28,000 tons of ice. Some of the ice was used by local dairy farmers to cool their milk but most was shipped in refrigerator cars to New York City by the Knickerbocker Ice Co.

Most of the large lakes in this area had commercial ice houses. The Ice House at Ice Pond was huge with a steam engine, a large brick building (dwelling or stable) and a bunk house for the men.