History Mystery
How did Ozark families keep food cool before they had refrigerators?
Early Ozarkers had fewer foods that needed cooling than we do today. However, food was harder to come by over a century ago, so it was critical to waste nothing by letting it spoil. With no refrigeration and very hot summers, how did they do it?
People took advantange of winter weather, using snow or ice to keep food cool. Streams, springs, and caves also served as natural “coolers.” But keeping food cool in the summertime was tricky!
Springhouses, little rock buildings around a spring or water supply, used thick stone walls and the constant cool temperature of groundwater to keep foods from spoiling so quickly in the summertime. Butter wrapped in a cloth, put in a bucket, and lowered into the spring or well would stay fresh much longer.
Root cellars, being below ground level, stayed cooler than the air temperature outside them. They, too, had thick walls to hold in the cool.
In ice shacks or limestone caves, pioneers used sawdust to insulate big blocks of ice cut from ponds in the winter, when it was available. The ice could be used for family or community projects like making ice cream.
In the late 1800s, ice plants in towns like Rogers, Fayetteville, and Springdale began selling ice, first harvested from northern lakes, later produced locally. Ice could be ordered by subscription and delivered to your house in a horse-drawn, tarpaulin-covered wagon. Customers placed a cardboard sign in their window telling how much ice they needed. Home ice delivery continued in the Ozarks through the early 1940s.
 |
Delivered ice could be put into one side or the top of an insulated cabinet called an icebox. In 1902, a handsome wooden icebox could be purchased from Sears Roebuck for $15 to $50. At that time, ice cost about a penny a pound. The tray beneath the ice had to be emptied daily as it melted. |
When electricity became widely available, ice plants could not only make their own ice, they could offer cold storage services to local farm families. For an annual rental fee, freezers could be packed with meat brought in from the farm. Someone went to the locker to pick up the next week’s supply of frozen food.
Although the first self-contained refrigerators appeared
in private homes in the 1920s, the freezing compartment had room for only
two ice trays, so food to be frozen for storage still had to go a locker
plant.
By the 1950s, chest style deep freezers were widely available,causing,
as Consumer Reports put it in 1952, “a revolution in the housekeeping
habits of American families who own them.”