Thompson’s Ice House (Classic)

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

This episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast explores Thompson's Ice House in South Bristol, Maine—a rare living tradition where locals gather

Key takeaways

Ice harvesting was once a major industry, with Maine supplying ice globally in the 19th century.
The tradition at Thompson's Ice House has survived since 1826 through community dedication and annual revival.

Main topics

Historical ice harvesting
Cultural preservation

Notable quotes

"If you keep it going physically and keep young people coming to do it, then it will live on." – Ken Lincoln

Conclusion

Thompson's Ice House stands as a testament to enduring tradition, where past

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:02) Hey everybody, it is Dylan here and I'm walking through my kitchen and I'm going to do something that I now pretty much take for granted every day. I'm going to walk up to my fridge, I'm holding a glass here, and I'm going to press a little lever. Speaker 5 (0:23) And that is ice magically falling out of the fridge into my glass. And then I can put water in it. I still think it's like one of the most luxurious things in the world. But a hundred years ago, getting ice was a much more complicated endeavor. Speaker 5 (0:45) Dozens of people out on a frozen pond wielding huge saws and pickaxes and cutting these just massive blocks of ice that would be stored and stacked and shipped across the globe. That was the way that ice got into people's homes and into their cups. It is just Speaker 4 (1:09) like a giant ice pick. Except it gets heavier. Speaker 5 (1:14) Yeah. I'm Dylan Thuras, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places. And today, we're headed to a small town in South Bristol, Maine, for an old-fashioned ice harvest. Thompson's Ice House is about 90 minutes north from Portland, Maine, and it's one of the only places on the planet where people still gather every winter to take part in... this particular antiquated process. And I joined in on the fun and work. It's a lot of hard work. So Atlas Obscura on ice. After this. Speaker 4 (2:21) What makes me feel like a kid when I'm out there? I mean, actually just being on the ice, pushing the blocks and, you know, even watching the children there. You almost go back to that time. Speaker 4 (2:33) This is Ken Lincoln. Speaker 5 (2:34) He has lived in Maine his whole life. He's maybe the most Mainery Mainer that I have ever met. And he actually was on this very ice Speaker 4 (2:44) as a kid. I've been connected to the ice house since I was probably eight or nine years old. The ice house that Speaker 5 (2:52) Ken is talking about is called the Thompson Ice House. It was named after the family Speaker 4 (2:57) that originally owned it. I'd come up with my father and he'd work the ice and then eventually as I grew a little older I moved up to the honor of working in the ice house which is a pretty big step when you're a kid. Speaker 5 (3:15) The ice house itself is right next to the pond. And it kind of looks like a small sort of classic barn. It's got wooden siding. It's got a little pointed roof. And every winter, Ken Lincoln and what appears to me to be the entire town of South Bristol come open up the ice house, take the tools down off the walls, and celebrate this tradition that's been frozen in time since 1826. The whole town comes. and just spends hours and hours cutting ice out of the pond and stacking it inside this ice house. Why go to the Speaker 4 (3:52) trouble of keeping something like this alive? If this went away, when anybody that had been here and done it is gone, it don't exist anymore, maybe in a video or in a book. I mean, so if you keep it going physically and keep young people coming to do it, then it will live on and live on. Speaker 5 (4:16) The process of ice harvesting started back in the 1800s in South Bristol, Maine. But of course, it goes back much, much farther. Like back to 300 BC, when Alexander the Great stored ice in pits so that it would be available year-round. There are records on cuneiform tablets of an ice house in ancient Mesopotamia. In 3rd century Rome, snow was sold in shops at the