Ice Facts

The Ice King

The commercial ice trade was born in Boston. Frederic Tudor (1783–1864), known as "The Ice King," launched the industry in 1806 when he shipped ice from his father's farm in Saugus to the Caribbean. Despite early losses and imprisonment for debt, Tudor built a global empire with ice houses in Havana, Jamaica, New Orleans, Charleston, Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Rio de Janeiro.

New England & the Hudson Valley

The heartland of American ice was the Hudson River Valley. By the 1880s, an estimated 20,000 workers harvested ice between Poughkeepsie and Albany, storing it in 135 purpose-built ice houses along the riverbanks. The work was seasonal and dangerous: subzero temperatures, high winds, the risk of falling through the ice, or being struck by 100-pound blocks.

Wenham Lake in Massachusetts became so famous for its crystal-clear ice that Norwegian exporters renamed a lake in Norway "Wenham Lake" to cash in on the brand. The Wenham Lake Ice Company received a royal warrant from Queen Victoria.

The Knickerbocker Ice Company

Founded in 1831 at Rockland Lake by John J. Felter and partners, Knickerbocker harvested the cleanest, purest ice in the Hudson Valley. By the 1850s, the company owned a dozen steamboats and 75 ice barges, employing about 3,000 people. Its three ice houses held nearly 100,000 tons. In 1902, Thomas Edison filmed its operations. The company declined by 1900 as artificial ice emerged.

Western Expansion

Ice harvesting followed the railroads west. Truckee, California became a major ice-producing centre, supplying the rapidly growing cities of the Pacific coast.

Key Numbers

• 90,000 workers at peak (late 1890s)
• Industry capitalised at $28 million
• Ice was the #2 US export after cotton
• 146,000 tons shipped to India in 1856 (peak year)
• New York City consumed ~285,000 tons of ice per year
• Americans consumed over 5 million tons annually
• NYC had over 1,500 ice delivery wagons
• Large operations: crews of 75 cutting 1,500 tons daily

Norway became the largest ice exporter in the world, surpassing the United States by the 1870s. Norwegian glacier ice was exported to Britain from around 1820, and by 1850, Norway was the UK's dominant supplier.

Scale of Operations

Norwegian ice exports peaked in the 1890s, when one million tons were exported annually. The trade was initially centred on the fjords of the west coast but shifted south and east to align with the timber and shipping industries. By 1895–96, Coastal Telemark alone had 1,300 workers exporting 125,000 tons; Nesodden employed 1,000 men exporting 95,000 tons by 1900. Key export destinations were England and Germany.

Artificial lakes up to half a mile long were built on farmland — some even extending into the sea to collect fresh water. Ice cutting was typically done at night when ice was thickest.

The British Connection

Norwegian ice dominated the London market for the last 40 years of the 19th century. The major importer, the Leftwich company, kept a thousand tons in store at all times. Ice was shipped to Regent's Canal Dock and stored underground in ice wells.

Curious Fact

In the early 1860s, Lake Oppegard in Norway was officially renamed "Wenham Lake" to confuse consumers into thinking they were buying the prestigious American product.

Ice harvesting in the Czech lands — known as ledarstvi — was intimately connected to the brewing industry. Czech breweries required 50–200 kg of ice per hectolitre of beer produced, making reliable ice supply essential. The practice has medieval roots: archaeological finds of oyster shells in Prague, Brno, Komorni Hradek, Veseli nad Moravou, and Plasky Monastery confirm a medieval ice-dependent food trade.

The Ledari of Prague

Professional ice harvesters called ledari worked on the frozen Vltava every winter. The primary harvesting zone stretched between Smichov and the Sitkovsky mills, where the river water was considered cleanest. According to 1906 records, over 100,000 cartloads of ice were transported from Prague's riverbanks in a single winter, employing approximately 550 men.

Ledari were organised in teams of 10–12 men with specialised roles: two cutters, a floater, a splitter, a pusher, a factor, two haulers, throwers, a builder, and a sweeper. The most skilled workers came from Podskalí, a historic riverside neighbourhood. In summer, many worked as vorari (raftsmen) on the same river. The ice had to be at least 30 cm thick before harvesting could begin, and the active season lasted only 2–3 weeks.

Branicke Ledarny — Prague's Ice Cathedral

The largest ice storage facility in Bohemia was the Branicke ledarny (Branik Ice Houses), built 1909–1911 by architect Josef Kovarovic for the Akciove ledarny company, founded by Prague's innkeepers and restaurateurs. The location was chosen because it was one of the coldest spots in the Vltava valley. The complex featured:

• Storage capacity of 20,000 tons of ice
• One of the first buildings in Prague to use a reinforced concrete skeleton
• Cork insulation within cavity walls with air gaps
• Sophisticated ventilation, water drainage, and three elevators
• Horse stables, an administrative villa, and caretaker's residence
• An artificial lagoon extending ~50m inland from the main channel, where workers controlled water flow to create thicker, faster-freezing ice

Operations ended in 1954 when the Slapska Dam, part of the Vltava Cascade, prevented the river from freezing. The complex on Ledarska Street is now a protected cultural monument (since 1964).

Jundrovske Ledarny — Moravia's Ice Houses

In 1884, Eduard Alfred Paget purchased land in Jundrov (Brno) for a wooden ice storage facility. By 1885 it was sold to "The Prague and Brunn Ice Company," which built an ice house 42 m long, 24 m wide, and 11 m high with three interior floors and a capacity of 500 wagon-loads. In 1888, Julius Brauner, brewmaster of Starobrnensky pivovar (Starobrno Brewery), purchased it. By 1910, three wooden ice houses had grown up in Jundrov, supplying Brno's inns, butchers, breweries, and confectioners.

Brewery Ice Houses

Czech brewery ice cellars (lednice) were sophisticated structures with large windows for loading ice blocks (sealed with straw and bricked shut after filling), access hatches for summer extraction, and wooden grates to separate ice from meltwater. Insulation materials included straw, sawdust, peat, diatomaceous earth, and cork bricks treated with asphalt. One cubic metre of ice weighed 917 kg; storage density reached 600–700 kg per cubic metre of cellar space.

Breweries and Their Ice Sources

• Plzensky Prazdroj (Pilsner Urquell) — ice from Bolevecky rybnik pond; a railroad spur was built in 1883 to transport ice to the brewery cellars; an iron conveyor was installed in 1942 extracting 100 tons/hour; in 1920, the brewery required 600 railroad cars of ice for 400,000 hl of production; last ice block harvested in 1987 — one of the latest documented uses of natural ice in European brewing
• Branicke pivovar, Prague — adjacent to the Branicke ledarny on the Vltava
• Starobrno, Brno — supplied by Jundrov ice houses on the Svratka River
• Pivovar Strakonice — located directly on the Otava River for convenient ice supply
• Pivovar Tabor — ice from Sudomerice pond, transported by horse-drawn wagon
• Pivovar Cerna v Posumavi — founded 1568 by Jakub Krcin; used Jestrabi, Novy Mlyn, and Olsovsky ponds; by 1931 had six cellar spaces totalling 5,000 m³, requiring 400–500 railroad cars of ice annually and employing 40 workers in ice season
• Stvanice island, Prague — 19th-century ice houses, modernised in 1911

The Last Freeze

In January 1947, during severe frosts, approximately 1,200 wagon-loads of ice were harvested from the Vltava in just four weeks. At the Branik facility, ice was 35–40 cm thick. The last time the Vltava completely froze in Prague was in 1956 — the ice was so thick that brewery horses pulling beer wagons from the Branik brewery could walk across to Zlichov. Remarkably, Plzensky Prazdroj continued harvesting natural ice from Bolevecky pond until 1987.

Britain's mild climate meant it could never produce enough ice domestically. London wanted ice in far greater quantities than the British climate provided. While some ice was gathered from lakes and even the Regent's Canal, the quality was poor and quantity small.

American Ice Arrives

Ice imports from the United States began in the 1840s. The Wenham Lake Ice Company sent its first shipment to Liverpool in 1844 and opened offices across Great Britain and Ireland. They displayed a two-foot square ice block in their Strand shop window during summer — a sensation in Victorian London. The company received a royal warrant from Queen Victoria.

Carlo Gatti and Norwegian Ice

The transformation came with Carlo Gatti, a Swiss-Italian immigrant who brought his first shipment of 400 tons of Norwegian ice to London in 1857. Gatti built two enormous brick-lined ice wells on Regent's Canal — each 30 feet in diameter and 42 feet deep. Norwegian ice dominated the London market for the last 40 years of the century.

Ice was carried by ship to Regent's Canal Dock (now Limehouse Basin), then by canal barge to the ice wells at King's Cross. From there, horse-drawn carts delivered ice across London. One of the ice wells survives today as the London Canal Museum.

Scale

The Leftwich company, a major importer, kept 1,000 tons in storage at all times. Norwegian ice was cheaper than American ice, eventually pushing the Wenham Lake company out of the British market.

India was the most dramatic destination of the global ice trade. On 12 May 1833, the brig Tuscany sailed from Boston with 180 tons of ice bound for Calcutta. When it approached the Ganges in September, many believed the delivery was an elaborate joke — but 100 tons had survived the four-month voyage.

The Calcutta Ice House

The British community in Calcutta built a grand stone Ice House to store the imported ice. Tudor's competitors soon entered the market, shipping to both Calcutta and Bombay and driving out most indigenous ice dealers.

Profitability

Calcutta remained enormously profitable: Tudor alone made more than $220,000 ($4.7 million in today's money) between 1833 and 1850. Exports to India peaked in 1856 with 146,000 tons shipped.

Traditional Indian Ice-Making

India also had its own ancient ice-making technique. Around 500 BCE, Indians placed water in porous clay pots on beds of straw; rapid evaporation under the cool night sky could chill water and, under the right conditions, create thin layers of ice.

Decline

The natural ice trade to India faltered during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and gradually gave way to mechanical ice production in the late 19th century.

Russia's relationship with ice is legendary. The mighty Neva River in St. Petersburg provided abundant ice, and Russian ice-cutting techniques were highly refined.

The Ice Palace of 1740

The most spectacular use of harvested ice in history was Empress Anna Ivanovna's Ice Palace, built during the brutally cold winter of 1739–40 (temperatures reached -40°C). Military personnel hauled blocks of the clearest Neva ice, each weighing 120 kg, measured with compasses and rulers, and assembled with cranes.

The palace was 60 feet wide and 30 feet tall. Everything was carved from ice: windows, furniture, tables, doors, and an exact replica of the empress's bedchamber with an ice bed, ice canopy, ice pillows, and ice sheets. The palace celebrated Russia's victory over the Ottoman Empire. By June 1740, it had melted into blocks floating in the river.

Commercial Ice Trade

Russia's harsh winters made natural ice abundantly available domestically, reducing the need for a large-scale export trade. However, ice harvesting from rivers and lakes was a common winter occupation across the country, supplying local markets, estates, and food preservation needs.

Sweden participated in the Scandinavian ice trade alongside Norway, though on a smaller scale. The coastal Swedes, along with Finns and indigenous Sami people, developed cultures and food systems that have relied on their knowledge of ice since the end of the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago.

Swedish ice was harvested from frozen lakes and rivers for domestic use and some export. The country's long, cold winters made ice readily available, and the practice supported local food preservation before the advent of mechanical refrigeration.

Finland played an important supporting role in the Scandinavian ice trade. In Helsinki, ice was harvested from two distinct sources:

• Baltic Sea bays — the brackish water with very low salinity in the shallow bays surrounding the city
• River Vantaa — the more valuable fresh water ice, harvested near the rapids where the river was widest

The river ice harvesting was concentrated in fishing communities, whose members took up ice work during winter months. During the mild winter of 1898, when Norway's ice production fell short, Britain turned to Finland for supplementary supplies.

Canadian ice harvesting centred on the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes region. Large chunks of ice were cut from the frozen river and transported to ice houses for year-round storage.

Methods

In the early years, ice was cut by hand using saws and axes, then transported by horse-drawn sleds. By the late 19th century, steam-powered ice-cutting machines operated on the frozen expanse of the St. Lawrence — a risky undertaking given the machine's bulk on the ice.

Ice Houses

Canadian ice houses were typically small, double-walled buildings, with the better ones having inner walls filled with cork or sawdust for insulation. Ice was a vital commodity in the Thousand Islands region, supporting local industries alongside boat building and stone quarrying.

Ontario

Ontario had a significant ice harvest history, with operations on numerous lakes and rivers across the province supplying cities and towns before mechanical refrigeration arrived.

From the 1850s onward, ice cutting took on large-scale industrial proportions in Germany, with Berlin as the key market. Germany was one of the largest consumers of ice in continental Europe.

Brewing Connection

Lager beer, enormously popular in Germany, requires cold temperatures during the brewing process. Bavarian breweries harvested ice from the Nymphenburger Canal and the Eisbach in Munich. In mild winters, ice was cut from the Birnhorn glacier and hauled into the valley via wooden chutes, then transported to Munich by train. Trees (especially chestnut trees) were planted above beer cellars — their thick foliage and shallow roots helped keep the vaults cool. In 1870, Carl von Linde developed the first large-scale refrigerated lagering tanks for the Spaten Brewery in Munich, beginning the end of ice dependence.

Medical Uses

Ice was also vitally important in the growth of German medicine, where complications from surgical procedures were significantly reduced with the use of ice for cooling and preservation.

Norwegian Imports

As US ice exports diminished after 1870, Norway shipped large quantities to Germany. In years when German lakes didn't freeze sufficiently, Norwegian demand would soar.

China has one of the oldest documented histories of organised ice harvesting in the world.

Ancient Practices

During the Shang Dynasty (1600–1046 BCE), ice was already used for preservation and cooling. By around 1000 BCE, the Chinese were cutting and storing natural ice from frozen lakes and rivers. The Zhou Rites record that the Zhou royal court established a specialised "ice administration" department with 80 employees who collected ice blocks each December and transported them to ice houses for storage.

Imperial Privilege

Ice was a mark of status: senior officials were awarded ice cubes by the royal court — considered a great honour. Underground chambers and specially constructed ice pits, insulated with straw and other materials, preserved ice into the warmer months.

The Songhua River

The Songhua River in northeastern China has a long tradition of ice harvesting, practised as a ceremony that continues to this day as part of the famous Harbin Ice Festival.

Tudor's Reach

By the 1840s, Frederic Tudor's ice was reaching China: ships carried New England ice to Hong Kong, making the American ice trade truly global.

Japanese ice harvesting has deep spiritual and cultural roots. The practice is intertwined with religious values — ice from sacred lakes was used in ceremonies representing purity and coexistence with nature.

Himuro — Ice Houses

Ice farmers and storage houses are called himuro. During the early Showa period (1926–1945), there were nearly 100 himuro throughout Japan. Today, only five remain — three of them in Nikko.

The Craft

When ice grows to about 15 cm thick, it is cut with a power cutter, pulled from the water, and stored in the himuro. The entire process is done manually. Ice is covered with sawdust — an ancient preservation method that absorbs surface moisture and insulates against melting.

Kakigori

Japan's beloved kakigori (shaved ice dessert) has roots in the Heian period (794–1185), when it was a luxury enjoyed only by the aristocracy who had access to stored ice. Today, the finest kakigori is still made with naturally harvested ice from Nikko.

Italy's ice traditions bridge ancient Roman practices and the birth of modern ice cream. Wealthy Romans imported Alpine snow for cooling beverages, and this tradition never entirely died.

Renaissance Revival

In the 16th century, Italians revived the use of ice on a broader scale. Wealthy Neapolitans of the late 17th century enjoyed Italian ice and sherbets — a practice adopted from the Turkish Empire. Ice was stored in vaults, commonly at the foot of mountains.

Cultural Export

Italy exported the culture of ice to France — the French borrowed the tradition of using ice, initially as an extravagance of the wealthy. The Italian Carlo Gatti later became London's most important ice merchant, building the famous ice wells on Regent's Canal.

Switzerland's Alpine glaciers provided a unique source of high-quality ice for the European market.

Grindelwald

By the 1870s, hundreds of men were employed to cut ice from the glaciers at Grindelwald in the Bernese Alps. This glacier ice, prized for its purity and density, was shipped across Europe.

Paris Connection

Paris began importing ice from Switzerland and the rest of Europe in 1869, creating a major market for Alpine ice.

Austria entered the European ice market behind Norway, but developed its own significant operations. The Vienna Ice Company exported natural ice to Germany by the end of the 19th century, leveraging Austria's cold Alpine winters and proximity to the German market.

Austrian breweries, like their Czech neighbours, relied heavily on natural ice for the lager brewing process.

The Netherlands has a unique relationship with frozen water. The country's extensive canal network made ice both a resource and a logistical challenge.

Ice Removal on Waterways

Historical records from 1330 to 1800 document the complex management of ice on Dutch waterways. During the Little Ice Age (roughly 1300–1850), canals froze regularly, disrupting vital water transport but also enabling the famous Dutch tradition of ice skating.

The Elfstedentocht

The Elfstedentocht (Eleven Cities Tour), a 200 km skating race through Friesland, symbolises the Dutch relationship with natural ice. The race can only be held when canals freeze to a safe thickness — it has been held only 15 times since 1909, most recently in 1997.

France borrowed the tradition of using ice from Italy in the 16th century, initially as an extravagance of the wealthy. French aristocracy used ice to cool drinks and preserve food, building glacieres (ice houses) on their estates.

In 1869, Paris began to import ice from Switzerland and the broader European market, fuelling demand for Alpine glacier ice from Grindelwald and other sources.

Spain developed a distinctive system of pozos de nieve (snow wells) across its mountain regions, active from the 16th through the early 20th century.

Sierra Espuna

The Sierra Espuna range in Murcia alone had 23 wells, each capable of holding up to one million kilos of ice. Snow was compacted in layers separated by thick layers of straw (wheat, oats, rye; vine shoots when straw was scarce), then transported by horse and carriage to cities between May and September. About 35% of the ice melted before reaching its destination.

Royal Privilege

In 1684, King Carlos II granted a royal privilege for Los Pozos de la Nieve in Seville. In January 1700, a historic harvest involved 70–80 people working on mountaintops for five days of uninterrupted work to fill the wells. Snow wells were also found in Jumilla, Yecla, Cieza, Abanilla, Fortuna, Caravaca de la Cruz, and Cartagena.

Canary Islands

Spanish colonisers brought the technology to the Canary Islands, where ice stored in caves and deep pits could reportedly last up to two years.

Perhaps the most remarkable ice storage structures in history are the Persian yakhchals (literally "ice pits"), dating to around 400 BCE.

Design

Yakhchals were dome-shaped structures with deep subterranean storage chambers. Their walls were made of a special mixture called sarooj — a composite of sand, clay, egg whites, lime, goat hair, and ash — extremely thick, waterproof, and heat-resistant.

How They Worked

Water was channelled into shallow basins that froze overnight in the desert cold (desert nights can drop well below zero even in warm climates). The ice was then cut into blocks and stored underground. Found primarily in the Dasht-e Lut and Dasht-e Kavir deserts of modern Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan.

Lasting Legacy

The Persian word yakhchal is still the modern word for "refrigerator" in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan.

Poland had a significant ice harvesting tradition, with purpose-built ice houses called lodownie — typically underground chambers on shaded hills, with stone or wooden walls, double insulation with straw, metal grating floors for drainage, and arched ceilings covered with earth and moss.

A Distinctive Technique

Polish ice workers developed a unique method: crushed ice was doused with boiling water, fusing the fragments into one enormous block that melted far more slowly than smaller pieces.

Major Exporter in Emergencies

During the "ice-free winter" of 1872, approximately 100 million kg of ice had to be imported by rail from Poland to supply Anton Dreher's Austrian breweries — a crisis that ultimately prompted Dreher to commission Professor Carl von Linde to develop mechanical refrigeration.

Urban Ice Subscriptions

In pre-war Poland, urban residents could purchase monthly ice subscriptions from commercial ice companies. A 1929 Lodz ice house advertised rapid delivery with subscription discounts. The Anstadt brewery in Lodz relied on adjacent fish ponds for ice supply.

The frozen Danube has been historically significant in Hungarian ice use — King Matthias Corvinus was reportedly crowned on Danube ice. The river freezes solidly enough in severe winters for foot crossings (and ice jams triggered Budapest's catastrophic Great Flood of 1838).

Dreher's Kobanya Brewery

Anton Dreher's brewery complex in Kobanya (Budapest), one of the largest in the Habsburg Empire, maintained massive ice cellars for lager production. In 1841, Dreher constructed ice cellars at his Schwechat brewery (near Vienna) covering 8,632 m², storing an astonishing 40,000 metric tons of ice. His Budapest operations would have been similarly equipped.

Birth of Mechanical Refrigeration

It was the 1872 ice crisis — when Dreher's breweries couldn't get enough natural ice — that drove him to commission Carl von Linde's cooling machine, installed at his Trieste brewery in 1877 and then at Schwechat. Dreher became the first brewer to adopt artificial cooling.

Korea has one of the most architecturally sophisticated ice storage traditions in Asia. Seokbinggo (literally "stone ice storage") are ingenious structures where ice blocks cut from frozen lakes were stored through the summer.

Ancient Origins

The earliest record of a binggo in Korean history dates to the Three Kingdoms Period (57 BCE – 668 CE). By the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), ice storage became a state-managed operation with elaborate infrastructure.

Joseon Dynasty Ice Infrastructure

King Taejo (founder of Joseon, r. 1392–1398) ordered construction of two major ice houses in Seoul: Seobinggo (Western Ice Storage) near the Han River for the palace kitchens, and Dongbinggo (Eastern Ice Storage) for court funerals. Workers cut blocks 12 cm thick and 1.8 m long from the frozen Han River. The government issued bingpae (ice ration tickets) based on rank. Royal funerals alone required approximately 15,000 ice blocks.

Gyeongju Seokbinggo

The most famous of seven surviving seokbinggo (all designated national treasures). Its engineering is remarkable: an arched granite ceiling with air pockets, ventilation ducts (wide at base, narrow at top) to expel warm air, limestone-coated walls to repel moisture, tilted floors for meltwater drainage, dried seaweed insulation, and grass planted on the earthen roof.

Bingsu

Korea's beloved bingsu (shaved ice dessert) traces its origins to the Joseon Dynasty, when stored ice was shaved and served with sweet toppings — a luxury for the aristocracy.

The Ottoman Empire had a formalised, institutional snow trade under the Karhane-i Amire ("Royal Snow Authority"). Professional snow gatherers called karci collected the cleanest new snow and compressed it in underground snow wells, insulated with felt and straw. The Ottomans were obsessed with cold drinks, sherbets, and chilled desserts. Constantinople also received Norwegian ice imports in the 19th century.

Karsambaç & Dondurma

A distinctive snow-based drink called karsambaç originated in the Karamanmaras region. When salep (powdered orchid tubers) was added, the famous stretchy Maras dondurma (Turkish ice cream) was born — one of the few ice-based foods that predates mechanical refrigeration and survives to this day.

Mexico's ice tradition predates European contact. The Mexica (Aztec) people extracted ice and snow from the volcanoes Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, with trained porters (tamemes) making two-day journeys from Tenochtitlan to the base of the mountains — a practice dating to the reign of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin (1502–1520).

Spanish Colonial Control

By 1620, Spanish authorities created a "snow monopoly" (estanco de nieve) to control the lucrative trade. The ice was wrapped in ixtle (agave fibre) and animal hides. Mexico's first commercial ice cream maker, Leonardo Leanos, emerged in the 17th century. The introduction of the Italian garrafa method — two nested containers with salted ice between them, constantly rotated — eventually democratised access. Nieves de garrafa remain beloved across Mexico today.

Brazil was one of Tudor's global trade destinations. Beginning in 1834, New England ice was shipped to Rio de Janeiro, where it arrived after weeks at sea. The ice trade brought cooling to the tropical Brazilian elite long before local manufacturing became viable.

In 1854, merchant Hoo Ah Kay (known as Whampoa) partnered with Gilbert Angus to import American ice, operating the Ice House at Boat Quay. The venture struggled, selling only 400–500 lbs/day (1,000 needed to break even). The Tudor Ice Company took control in 1861 but lost ~$20,000.

Local Manufacturing Wins

That same year (1861), Singapore Ice Works opened on River Valley Road — the first to produce ice locally at 3 cents/lb (2 cents cheaper than imported). Competition intensified: the Straits Ice Company (1881) drove prices to 1.5 cents/lb. By 1903, the Cold Storage Company dominated. Tuck Lee Ice (founded 1924) still operates today with modern robotics.

Peru is remarkable for having one of the last living traditions of natural ice harvesting in the world. For centuries, Indigenous communities in the Andes have harvested glacier ice for ceremonial and practical purposes.

Qoyllur Rit'i

The annual Qoyllur Rit'i pilgrimage to the Sinakara glacier near Cusco traditionally included the ritual of carrying blocks of glacier ice back down the mountain — ice believed to have sacred healing properties. As glaciers retreat due to climate change, this centuries-old tradition is being reshaped, highlighting the direct connection between ice harvesting and environmental change.

Scotland's ice trade was driven by the salmon fishing industry. Fresh salmon exports to England's industrial cities created huge demand for ice storage.

The Tugnet Ice House

The Tugnet Ice House (built 1830) on the River Spey is the largest surviving ice house in the United Kingdom. It stored ice for packing salmon before market shipment. Glasgow had multiple ice houses, and around 1802, entrepreneur William Harvey set up ice houses beneath a bridge across the St Enoch Burn.

Norwegian Imports & Local Manufacturing

Norwegian ice was imported into Scotland until the 1920s. The Scottish Cold Storage & Ice Company opened in Glasgow in the late 1890s using ammonia compression, but suffered a catastrophic pipe burst in September 1898 that killed three workers. Wellpark Brewery (Tennents) had its own ice engine house by 1898.

Ecuador is home to perhaps the most poignant story in the history of ice harvesting. Baltazar Ushca (died October 11, 2024, age 80) was the last ice merchant of Mount Chimborazo (Ecuador's highest peak at 6,263m).

A 50-Year Tradition

For over 50 years, Ushca made the journey twice a week using just his hands and a pickaxe, cutting glacial ice, wrapping it in straw for insulation, and loading it onto donkeys for the descent. He started at age 15, following a family tradition spanning generations. He never wore gloves.

At its peak, up to 40 ice merchants made the journey. By the end, Ushca was the only one left — his brothers had retired for steadier work. After his death, Ecuador's National Institute of Cultural Heritage honoured him as "a reference for the knowledge of our people."

Natural ice from New England was imported and auctioned at Colombo harbour — the "white glittering chunks" were available only at functions and houses of the socially privileged. Tudor maintained ice houses in Sri Lanka among his many locations.

Local Manufacturing

In 1866, the Colombo Ice Company was founded with imported ice-making machinery, initial capital of GBP 1,600, two steam engines, and 22 employees. Located on Glennie Street, Slave Island, the area became locally known as "Kompaniveediya" (Ice Company area). The company evolved through multiple owners into Ceylon Cold Stores — still operating today as one of Sri Lanka's oldest companies.

Australia's extreme distance from ice-producing regions (115-day sea journeys from New England) made it the place where manufactured ice displaced natural ice earliest.

First shipments of American ice arrived in 1839. But by the 1850s, James Harrison had built an ice plant in Melbourne that dominated the local market. Harrison's commercially viable refrigeration system, built in Geelong in 1854, was one of the first in the world, making Australian artificial ice competitive well before most other markets.

The Caribbean was where the global ice trade began — and failed, and then succeeded. Tudor's first shipment went to Martinique in 1806, followed by Havana, which became his biggest and most reliable market.

By 1816, Tudor was shipping ice to Cuba with increasing efficiency, experimenting with insulating materials (wood shavings, sawdust, rice chaff). Ice was used to chill drinks in elite bars and, crucially, in hospitals to treat fevers and aid in surgeries. Tudor also shipped to Jamaica, Haiti, and other Caribbean islands.