It’s interesting that for most of the tour we have been talking about lovely estates, parkland and wildlife but Jamaica Pond has some commercial uses too. The biggest industry here was ice, and ice was big business. The idea came from the Ice King, Frederic Tudor (1783–1864). He decided to send the ships that had brought goods from tropical ports of call back with ice in their holds as ballast. He organized the first shipment of ice to Martinique, which left from Tudor Wharf in 1806. The business took a few years to get sorted out but once the method of packing the ice in sawdust was worked out - a process which insured delivery in frozen condition - Tudor cashed in. In 1856, 146,000 tons of ice was shipped from the U.S. to Cuba, Rio de Janeiro, the West Indies and even as far as Calcutta and the Far East. Tudor cut some of his ice during the winter months here at Jamaica Pond (but used many other ponds as well).
The ice houses were all along this shore (just down from Parkman’s gardens).The first evidence of a commercial ice operation on Jamaica Pond is found on an inset of an 1855 map. In 1862, the Town of West Roxbury went to court, charging ice house owner Enos Stoddard of “breaking and entering,” and carrying away 8000 tons of water that was the property of the town and selling it outside West Roxbury. The town put up a notice at the ice house, and delivered a bill of three cents per ton of ice. The court decided that the colonial right to “fish and fowl” in great ponds (larger than 10 acres) included the right to take ice.
Before the appearance of the industrial engine, hauling ice into storage was a slow and laborious process that required the use of horses, heavy ropes and pulleys. By the middle of the 19th century, stationary industrial steam engines were being used to drive ice conveyors at a rapid pace, greatly improving the efficiency of hauling the heavy cakes of ice up to the icehouses on the shore. The Boston Globe reported in February of 1874 that the Jamaica Pond Ice Company was employing about 350 men harvesting ice on Jamaica Pond, packing the ice into the icehouses, and delivering ice to wholesale and retail customers. By 1880, the Jamaica Pond Ice Company had 22 icehouses on Jamaica Pond with a storage capacity of 30,000 tons. The company supplied ice to customers in Brookline, West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, South End, Roxbury and Dorchester.
The mechanics of ice harvesting are well-documented on the JPHS website with ample maps, photos and even some video footage.
The decline of the ice industry on Jamaica Pond was fueled by the conflict between commercial and recreational use of the pond. Large numbers of horses were used to harvest the ice and their waste led to pollution of both the water and the shoreline. As we have noted, the movement to incorporate the pond into the park system was also gaining currency. And as time went on, the electric refrigerator made the ice company obsolete. By 1913 electric refrigerators were being marketed for household use although both natural and artificial ice continued to be delivered to homes through the end of World War II. After the war, home refrigerators quickly came to displace the icebox in most North American homes and the ice harvesting industry quietly came to an end.