Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
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Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
CONLIN AND KEARNS
CONLIN AND KEARNS. Ice was cut from the MISSISSIPPI RIVER to form channels to the company's icehouse off East 6th Street. Gas-powered saws were used to cut ice rafts, twenty feet long and approximately sixty-four inches wide. As many as eighty men using "spud bars," steel poles with flat edges, guided the rafts toward the ice house where the slabs were laid in any of the building's four rooms.
Sawdust, an insulation, was normally used to cover the top layer of ice in each room. The walls of the icehouse were also packed with sawdust to keep the ice from melting. Harvests made in late winter, sometimes when the ice was only six inches thick, had to last until the next winter.
On May 28, 1911, the spectacular fire that destroyed Dubuque's STANDARD LUMBER COMPANY also destroyed the Conlin and Kearns' icehouse leaving a 12,000-ton charred wood-covered ice block to gradually melt. However, Conlin and Kearns continued to harvest river ice for another twenty years.
The 1911-12 Dubuque City Directory through the 1916-1917 White's Dubuque County Directory listed the address as 568 Iowa.
The 1918 Dubuque and East Dubuque City Directory through the 1945 Dubuque City Directory listed 576 Iowa.
