The Armour and Company Icehouse

Memphis began in February 1887 with the first train, on land John C. Owen had homesteaded, and lots went on sale that July 15. Armour bought its 40-acre site on the north edge of town from H. C. Henry. Harvest pay was 15 cents an hour, later 19 cents, and crews boarded for 50 cents a day in a three-story house. The ice was said to be the purest in the state and was known as lemonade ice. The Izaak Walton League, led by Roy Owen, George Baker and Emor Ballou, later pushed for the state park.

What the plaque says

The Armour and Company Icehouse The Armour and Company Icehouse was built in 1897-98 northwest of Memphis, Nebraska. It was one of the largest icehouses in the country, measuring approximately 180 feet wide, 700 feet long, and 52 feet high. A 300-horsepower steam engine and two generators provided electrical power. A manmade lake of about 100 acres was filled each fall from Silver Creek. Harvesting began when the ice was eight inches thick. It was scored, sawed, and the blocks poled along an open channel to elevators and into the ice rooms, where they were packed in sawdust. In the spring the lake was drained, leaving a small fish pond. The ice was used in refrigerated railcars and meat-packing plants, and was also sold to businesses in eastern Nebraska. In 1899, 100,000 tons of ice were harvested. It was common to ship 100 or more railcars of ice each month during the summer. Twenty-five employees lived nearby, and 300 men were hired during the busy season. The icehouse burned in 1921. In 1930 Memphis State Recreation Area was established at the site of the icehouse and lake. Saline Ford Historical Preservation Society, Ashland Nebraska Game and Parks Commission Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 8.3 mi
  Two hangar-sized halls beside I-80 near Ashland holding the bombers and reconnaissance planes of the command that ran America's nuclear force from Offutt, south of Omaha, from 1948 to 1992.
• Nebraska State Capitol — 24 mi
  Bertram Goodhue's 400-foot tower on the prairie, built in four phases from 1922 to 1932 and paid off on completion, home of the only one-house legislature in the country.
• Fort Atkinson State Historical Park — 33 mi
  The first U.S. Army post west of the Missouri, a garrison town of more than a thousand people on Council Bluff from 1820 to 1827, rebuilt on its own foundations.

More markers nearby

• The Ox-Bow Trail — 5.8 mi
• Atlas D Missile Site A-1 — 6.0 mi
• Atlas D Missile Site A-1 — 6.5 mi
• Prehistoric Burial Site — 7.8 mi