Keeping it Cool

Keeping it Cool. Civilian Conservation Corps Company 1475, Camp S-67, Tracy City. Even in the age of refrigeration, the ice house still had a role. , To keep food cold, the CCC camp did have modern refrigeration, but in those days, the "ice boxes" were small, and a kitchen that had to feed 200 or more people every day needed to keep more food cold than even multiple refrigerators could hold., Although there is no specific documentation to this effect, it appears the foundation in front of you was, in fact, that of an ice house., The tell-tale clue is in the concrete floor itself: Ice houses typically had part of their floors reinforced to hold the great weight of the large ice blocks that were brought in to maintain the cool of these small buildings (photo at right)., Walls of ice houses were typically filled with sawdust, a good insulator (inset photo), and had short walls, and a heavily-insulated roof, as in this photo (below) of another CCC ice house in Michigan. The small drain in the floor let water from the melting ice exit the building., Logically, the ice house would be located near the camp's Dining Hall kitchen, so cooks could easily retrieve cold items at meal prep time. This structure's location, in close proximity to what is believed to be the well and the grease trap for the kitchen, further reinforces the theory that the kitchen area, at the back of the Dining Hall, was close by., Photo caption (left, top): Cutaway view of an ice house wall, showing the sawdust fill typically used as insulation. , Photo caption (left, bottom): Though the ice house at Camp S-67 likely had wood siding rather than stone, the general shape and design of this CCC ice house, in Michigan, was likely quite similar. , Image caption (center, bottom): This conceptual diagram shows the proximity of the three kitchen-related structures (well-head, ice house and grease trap) to the presumed former location of the Camp S-67 Mess Hall and kitchen. (Not to scale) , Photo caption (right, bottom): This feature, embedded in the concrete floor of what is believed to be an ice house/food cooler, is thought to be special concrete reinforcement to bear the extra weight of huge blocks of ice, placed inside the small building to keep food chilled. The small trench, middle-left, was part of a drain that collected melting water from the ice; a clay-tile pipe carried the water to a drainage ditch outside the building.