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Reflections
Fox River ice a big business here for a short time : Reflections : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, Illinois Fox River ice a big business here for a short time
| by Roger Matile
| 1/13/2011
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It was a fortunate coincidence when the need for more sources of ice for commercial sale was created almost exactly when the Ottawa, Oswego and Fox River Valley Railroad was completed through Kendall County.
The supply of enough natural ice to go around as demand sharply increased was becoming critical in the Chicago region just as the new rail line reached towns in the Fox Valley where large amounts of ice could be harvested and stored for later shipment.
The Chicago-based firm of Esch Brothers & Rabe quickly grabbed the best ice producing areas north of Ottawa at Oswego and Yorkville. At Oswego, they built a huge ice storage operation, while at Yorkville, they took over the former Caledonia Ice Company operation, which they also significantly expanded.
Competition was fierce in the ice business as demand grew thanks to the introduction of home ice boxes. Most homes could afford an ice box, and the price of ice was low enough that even low-income families could benefit from better food preservation. Less food was wasted, resulting in lower food costs, and less spoiled food was consumed resulting better family health.
As demand spiked, so did the number of ice companies. In 1870, there were only seven ice companies in Chicago. By 1880 there were 21, and by 1900 76 ice companies were doing business in the city.
With so many new companies, competition was cutthroat, something the established companies dealt with by creating a secret ice cartel in violation of state law. Esch Brothers, along with Griffin & Connolley and other Chicago ice firms formed the Chicago Ice Exchange. Exchange members paid $50 per ice wagon with the promise they would not poach other members' customers.
Meanwhile, in the Fox Valley things were going great guns. Each January, Esch Brothers & Rabe employed up to 75 men in both Oswego and Yorkville to harvest ice. After scrapers pulled by horses cleared snow off the 15-inch thick ice above the two towns' dams, horse drawn ice plows cut deep parallel grooves into the ice. Each day, a channel was cleared from the mill pond to the shore. Huge cakes of ice in uniform sizes were floated along the open channel to the ice elevator on shore, where an endless chain propelled by a steam engine raised the ice up out of the water and sent it up an incline to the ice houses where it was planed to a standard thickness. The blocks were stored in layers, each insulated with layers of straw or sawdust. On good days, 1,000 tons of ice were cut and stored.
The facilities at both Oswego and Yorkville had their own rail sidings. In 1880, Esch Brothers & Rabe shipped 581 railcar loads of ice from Oswego. By 1884, storage facilities and productivity had both increased, and the company reported shipping 1,089 railcar loads of ice.
Not that there weren't business hazards, of course. In 1887, after the Record reported the largest-ever ice harvest at Yorkville, Esch Brothers & Rabe's ice houses were destroyed by fire. According to the April 13 Kendall County Record: "There were about a dozen large houses all connected and filled with hundreds of tons of splendid ice...The loss is estimated at about $5,000."
In 1890, the ice harvest was poor due to warmer weather, and then in March 1891, 14 of the company's older ice houses at Oswego burned to the ground. "The scene was grand, yet of a weird appearance, the whole region around being lit up with a red glare, " the Record's Oswego correspondent reported.
Low water in the Fox hampered the ice harvest in January 1893. Ice was cut, but there wasn't enough to float the cakes to the shore for storage. Meanwhile at Yorkville, the dam was damaged by the spring flood in 1901 causing Esch Brothers & Rabe to scramble to get it repaired in time for the winter ice harvest. By November, Record Editor John R. Marshall could report: "Chicago people will get good ice from Yorkville. The water in the Fox River at this point has been very clear and clean this year."
Then in June 1902, the ice houses at Yorkville burned yet again after being struck by lightning. The fire was visible for miles, the Record's Specie Grove correspondent writing: "Many of our people saw the ice-house fire at Yorkville. Being awakened by the storm, the light through the windows drew their attention to the fire."
The company immediately rebuilt to carry on the Yorkville operation. In Oswego, however, damage to the dam halted operations there. Then in August of 1904, the rest of the Oswego ice houses burned to the ground, probably from a spark from a passing locomotive. Ironically, eight of the railroad's freight cars on the ice company siding were also consumed by the fire.
Fire and flood were not the only hazards facing Esch Brothers & Rabe, however. In 1897, a new, much larger "ice trust," the Knickerbocker Ice Company, was established in Chicago with the goal of eliminating competition so that prices could be raised. Like the Chicago Ice Exchange, the new cartel was also illegal, but it had real money behind it and it gobbled up companies quickly. And just as quickly, prices were sharply raised. The trust also tried direct action, such as damaging dams other companies depended upon, including those at Yorkville and Oswego. In January 1907, Esch Brothers finally sold out to Knickerbocker.
By then, the days of natural ice production were nearly over. Not only was the Fox River becoming badly polluted by the turn of the 20th century, but the development of ice making machines precluded the need for harvesting natural ice. By 1910, several of Chicago's 71 ice dealers were advertising manufactured ice.
Strangely, this once-flourishing industry has left no trace behind on the Fox Valley's landscape. The giant ice houses, workers' boarding houses, stables, rail sidings, and steam ice elevators are the stuff of another generation's memories. But it was a rousing, exciting time, when men harvested the winter.
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