If you lived on the Gunflint Trail 70 years ago, you might have been called upon to help with a little task called harvesting ice. This was the process in which lake ice was cut into blocks and transported to the ice house where the blocks were packed with sawdust for safekeeping until summer usage.

According to Betsy Powell’s book Betsy and Saganaga, ice harvesting on the Gunflint Trail often took place between Christmas and New Year’s Day, or whenever the ice reached its desired thickness, usually between 12″ – 18″. As soon as ice formed on the lakes, ice fields had to be selected and kept clear of any snowfall so the snow’s weight on the ice wouldn’t cause lake water to come over the ice and create “slush” on top of the lake ice when the lake water mixed with snow. Keeping the ice fields clear of snow also made the ice freeze faster.

Ralph Griffis, last owner of Chik-Wauk Lodge explained the process of harvesting ice in a 2006 interview with the Gunflint Trail Historical Society: I had to find out that you mark your big ice field out and mark your squares on it, and you cut the ice. Don’t cut it all the way through, you go cut down with 2 or 3 inches of the bottom and then to start with, you make a wedge-shape of the first piece. The wedge is from 2 foot down to nothing. And you chip out the big hole first. And then from then all you had to do was hit that thing once or twice and then it popped loose and floated.

Once the ice popped loose, ice harvesters had to pull the floating ice out of the now open patch of water with ice tongs and then transport the ice to, and stack it in, the icehouse.

Walter Bunn of Swanson’s Lodge usually only put up about 200 cakes of ice per winter, but he estimated that he helped neighbor Jesse Gapen over at Gateway Lodge on Hungry Jack Lake put up about 720 blocks of ice one winter. Bunn remembers ice harvesting as a communal project, something Gunflint Trail neighbors were expected to participate in. Until electricity came to the Gunflint Trail, Bunn helped put ice up at four different businesses each winter.

The ice harvest was heavy, cold work and people were always looking for ways to make the task easier.

Ralph Griffis described the process he and his wife Bea developed for transporting ice to the Chik-Wauk icehouse. They had constructed a pulley system with an attached hook and a set of rails. Both the pulley system and the rails ran from the icehouse to the place where Ralph was cutting ice on the lake. Ralph would place the ice blocks onto two metal rails and hook the hook from the pulley system into the back block of ice.  Bea would then drive their Ford wagon, which was attached to the pulley system, and drag the ice up the rails and into the ice house.

When power came to the Gunflint Trail in the late 1950s, the practice of harvesting ice became obsolete, although up on the Canadian side of Saganaga, the Powells at Green Forest Lodge continued to harvest approximately 800-900 cakes of ice until 1965.