Laurel Bill on Alaska Story Time with Aunt Phil, Alaska's wacky ice business
Laurel Bill on Alaska Story Time with Aunt Phil, Alaska's wacky ice business
The first horses, road and sawmill in Alaska all were dedicated to one business in the 1850s. Alaska author/historian Laurel Downing Bill shares the story of what some people called Alaska’s wackiest business of shipping ice to the Continental states and beyond.
Alaska got involved in the ice business in the 1850s. The Last Frontier had plenty of ice and California wanted some as it was in the midst of a gold boom and people could afford such luxuries as ice to chill their drinks and keep food from spoiling. But ice sent from Boston via Cape Horn was very expensive and not enough could be supplied to meet the demand. Alaska was closer.
The first shipment of ice was sent from Sitka in February 1852, and it sold for about $75 a ton in San Francisco – more than $2,000 in today’s money. But ice from Southeast Alaska proved unpredictable due to the region’s mild climate. So they turned to Woody Island when it was discovered that 40-acre Lake Tanignak could supply better ice than Sitka.
Between 1852 and 1853, the Russians built two large icehouses on Woody, a little “two-by-four” island that lies just off the city of Kodiak. More than 7,000 tons of ice was shipped as far south as Mexico and Central and South America between 1852 and 1859.
A crew of between 150 and 200 Natives worked from 8 to 11 a.m. and from noon to five p.m. to cut and store the ice. They received a wine glass full of rum and fish soup for lunch and another glass of rum and 20 cents for pay at the end of the day.
The Russians then entered into an unusual agreement in the early 1850s after an artificial ice machine was invented. These machines were expensive and few people could afford them, so in order to stifle competition, the ice machine manufacturer offered to pay a set sum every year to the Alaska ice company to NOT ship the ice it chipped out of Lake Tanignak.
The “not to ship ice” contract was renewed for a number of years – and in order to make sure the ice machine manufacturers wouldn’t back out of the agreement, the Russians continued to put up new ice each year as an insurance policy.
An article by Jay Stauter in the January 1956 Alaska Sportsman magazine called it “Alaska’s Wackiest Enterprise” – a sawmill that sawed lumber to make sawdust to preserve ice that was thrown away to make room for a freshly cut supply of ice that never would be used!
This segment of Alaska Story Time with Aunt Phil aired on CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA Channel 11 Daybreak on Jan. 11, 2016.
Alaska history
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http://www.AuntPhilsTrunk.com
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