There was a booming industry for harvesting, transporting, and storing ice from about the early 1800s to when refrigeration replaced iceboxes and ice houses after WWI. Ice trade workers cut blocks of ice from lakes and ponds in the winter and packed it in straw and sawdust to sell. Walden Pond and Fresh Pond in Massachusetts were quite famous for their high-quality delicious ice. Businesses bought ice to store meat and dairy products, and individuals bought ice blocks for their ice boxes. But what about places where it's warm year-round? Same concept, just imported from a further distance.

Wealthy people had ice houses on their estates. Thomas Jefferson, for example, liked to impress his summer guests at Monticello by serving ice cream and drinks with ice cubes. From the Monticello website, here's Jefferson describing how the French constructed their ice houses: 1787 April 23. (Jefferson-Tour through Southern France). "The Ice-Houses at Rozzano are dug about 15.f. deep, and 20.f. diameter and poles are driven down all round. A conical thatched roof is then put over them 15f. high. Pieces of wood are laid at bottom to keep the ice out of the water which drips from it, and goes off by a sink. Straw is laid on this wood, and then the house filled with ice always putting straw between the ice and the walls, and covering ultimately with straw. About a third is lost by melting. Snow gives the most delicate flavor to creams; but ice is the most powerful congealer, and lasts longest. A tuft of trees surrounds these ice houses." If you had enough money, you could build an ice house and have ice year-round (to use or to sell), whether in Massachusetts, Virginia, or Cambodia.

As people from hotter climates marveled at summer ice in the US and Europe -- and as the shipping industry became more efficient -- the international ice trade boomed. Henry David Thoreau wrote about ice cutters descending on Walden Pond when the ice was thick enough: "Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? ...Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the implements of farming...Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well." (Walden, chp 16).

Entrepreneurs like Frederic Tudor built ice houses in tropical ports and made a fortune shipping ice from New England and New York around the world. How did they keep the ice cold in long-haul shipping? They packed it in a foot of sawdust on each side and used it as ballast.

Andrew Robichaud has a book in the works about the Massachusetts ice trade. Here's an article touching on Robichaud's comments on Thoreau and Tudor. Laurence Pringle and Gavin Weightman also have fascinating books out about the ice industry.