The Train Engine at the Bottom of Round Lake

When I go speak in schools (about 10-15 times a year) I always get asked to tell the legend of the "Train Engine at the Bottom of Round Lake". The kids love the story, I love it as well, plus its an excellent "accurate" history lesson with a potentially mythical ending.

On the site of today's Alpine Country Club used to exist the Armour Ice House. There are two pictures of the actual ice house from 1912 in this post as well.

Ice houses were buildings used to store ice throughout the year, prior to the invention of the refrigerator. The most common designs involved underground chambers, usually man-made, which were built close to natural sources of winter ice such as freshwater lakes (i.e. Round Lake)
During the winter, ice and snow would be taken into the ice house and packed with insulation, often straw or sawdust. It remained frozen for many months, often until the following winter, and could be used as a source of ice during summer months. This could be used simply to cool drinks, or allow ice-cream and sorbet desserts to be prepared.

So how did they create ice? In winter months, ice was chopped from a lake surface and often dragged by sledge to the ice house, and in summer months, was delivered from local ice houses to residences in ice wagons or ice trucks, where it would be stored in an ice box, which was used much like a modern refrigerator. In Round Lake it was not dragged by sledge but was moved via temporary rail lines laid down on the iced over lake. There was an engine that would move the ice back and forth. In addition the engine would take loads up the rail spur to the main line about half a mile away. As home and business refrigeration became more common, ice houses disappeared. The home ice delivery business declined, and was virtually gone by the late 1960s. Our ice house was gone by 1928 as near as I can tell.

You can still see evidence of the rail spur, which is still existent. When our downtown development district gets cooking (it will) one of the goals for this area is to make a nice walking path from the older area of Round Lake into our downtown.

So here's how the train engine got to the bottom of the lake, with the advent of refrigeration the ice house business collapsed quickly in the late 20's and with the depression, business contracted even quicker. So when the decision not to continue with the ice house was made, the question was what do to with the equipment. So legend has it that when the last ice cutting season was finished the engine was parked on the ice, and allowed to fall in when the ice melted.