Museum Hours:
Saturdays & Sundays
2:00 - 5:00 p.m.

Special tours can be arranged by calling:

George Rutherford at 814.382.7761

            The Conneaut Lake Ice Company was formed in 1878 by Col. D.S. Richmond, capitalized at $100,000.  Its ice storage houses had capacity for 75,000 tons of ice, just east of today’s Silver Shores restaurant.  The average harvest was 100,000 tons and was enough ice to meet 1/3 the needs of New York City.
            Two hundred men were hired each winter to cut ice which was then stored in sawdust, pulled in sledges by farmer’s teams to the icehouses.  Workers marked out grid lines to saw standard size pieces of 25, 50 or 100 pounds.
            In 1883, 300 carlods of ice were shipped to Pittsburgh, six cars a day.
            In 1907 the men went on strike and demanded an increase of 25 cents a day, a total day’s pay was $2.00.
            With its monopoly on the ice harvest, the company believed that it “owned” the lake and began charging the Conneaut lake Navigation Co $1500 a year for exclusive passenger transportation privileges and taxed private pleasure boats as well.   A little steamer, the Anita, was shipped from Pittsburgh to Linesville by freight and taken to Hotel Midway where it was launched.  The ice company beached it and a lawsuit ensued over the lake’s ownership.  The court ruled the state owned the lake as a public body of water, a ruling that still holds today.
            By the late 1920’s, modern refrigerators arrived on the scene and the ice industry was becoming a thing of the past.  In the early 1930’s, the ice company ended its business and the ice houses were torn down – to make way for progress.  However the Stilley family still sold ice via truck route where they delivered ice to area homes which did not have electricity for refrigeration.