Ice Maker

Most of us today when we want an ice cube, we venture to the refrigerator but there was a time in Grove City when that wasn’t possible. Ice was delivered door-to-door in large blocks on a horse drawn wagon then placed in an icebox; there were no ice cubes. In the early years, Grove City had numerous ponds that froze over during the winter months where ice could be harvested. One of the popular spots was a clay bed pond at the old tile factory once located behind the Lutheran church on Columbus Street. There was another pond near the former Grove City Farmers Exchange building on Broadway where ice blocks could also be harvested. The scene pictured is a pond behind the church, the same place where two 12-foot tusks and the skull of a Mastodon was discovered around 1899.