Crystal Lake

Ayr, the town the plaque measures from, came first. The Burlington and Missouri River line went through in 1875, and the South Platte Town Site Company platted the town in September 1878, naming it for a Burlington director, Dr. Ayr of Iowa, according to the 1999 Adams County historic buildings survey. Because Ayr sat off the main line, its name broke the railroad's alphabetical run of town names. Its first buildings served the railroad: a depot, a hotel, stockyards and grain elevators. Fourteen businesses followed, though Hastings was only twelve miles away.

What the plaque says

Crystal Lake In 1893 the Crystal Ice Company dammed a portion of the Little Blue River 1-¼ miles north of Ayr, creating "Crystal Lake" for harvesting and selling ice. A huge storage and loading facility was built on the nearby Republican Valley branch of the Burlington Railroad. Horse-drawn scoring knives and long, backbreaking ice saws, later replaced by power saws, cut the 16" thick ice into 9' 2" squares, which were floated down a channel to be cut into twenty-five, 22" x 22" cakes. Ten thousand tons per season was the capacity. A large ice house was filled for the Hastings trade, and hundreds of car- loads were sold to the railroad. This winter ice harvest provided a thirty-day income for as many as fifty workers. In the 1920s mechanical refrigeration ended the ice business and Crystal Lake became a private recreation area for picnics, dancing, swimming, boating, fishing, and skating. In 1937 the 63-acre site was purchased by the state and improved by the WPA. Silt eventually filled the lake, and in 1976 a $180,818 renovation of the lake and park was a project of the Ayr Bicentennial Committee. Crystal Lake State Recreation Area is part of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission system. Ayr Bicentennial Committee Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rowe Sanctuary — 28 mi
  Audubon's sanctuary on the Platte near Gibbon, where the river's sandbars are kept bare so that sandhill cranes, more than a million in the valley each spring, can roost safely at night.

More markers nearby

• Kingston Cemetery — 3.8 mi
• Hastings Brickyard Park — 8.7 mi
• Hastings Chautauqua Pavilion — 9.3 mi
• Central Hastings Historic District — 9.7 mi