By Steve Plutt, Special to the Courier

In celebration of Colorado’s 150th birthday and the United States’ 250th, local historian Steve Plutt and the Ute Pass Historical Society have written a series of stories to bring the area’s colorful history to life.

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Lake George is a tiny unincorporated town on U.S. 24 about 40 miles west of Colorado Springs. It sits in what is known in meteorology as a “cold sink” and is at 8,000 feet in elevation.

The winter temperatures here, because of the “cold sink,” get well below zero and have some of the coldest temperatures on the entire eastern slope of Colorado. After a snowstorm and the skies clear in the afternoon, you can expect the most severe temperatures that next morning.

With the Colorado Midland Railroad completion through Lake George, it was the perfect time for someone to capitalize on both the railroad and the cold temperatures of the area. Enter George Frost, a native New Yorker, born in 1843.

Frost envisioned that the South Platte River and the frigid temperatures in Lake George would make an ice house a lucrative venture. So in July of 1891 he started building Lidderdale Reservoir at present-day Lake George. His vision also included for the summertime months a large steam yacht, many small pleasure boats and an elegant hotel.

After the completion of the lake, a huge ice house was constructed beside the east edge of the water. The Lake George Ice Company produced ice that was of a most superior quality and purity, which in turn made it the preferred ice all over the state of Colorado.

Lake George Ice was advertised in Colorado Springs as “a natural ice taken from the famous Lake George, 40 miles west of this city at an elevation of 8,000 feet. It has a state wide reputation for its pure, sparkling water, clear as crystal, which when frozen makes an absolutely pure, clear ice free from all impurities and absolutely without any contamination, together with higher refrigeration and careful handling that makes Lake George Ice the finest in the state.”

Cutting the ice began with a large workforce of men and horses out on the frozen lake. The size of the workforce depended on the demand for ice with several different railroads and other contracts throughout the Front Range. The ice business in Lake George employed from 75 to over 200 men to cut and store it. Lake George ice also allowed The Broadmoor’s rich and famous to sip cool drinks in the hot Colorado Springs summers.

Frost annually sold tens of thousands of tons of ice to the Colorado Midland Railroad and other railroads such as the Rock Island, Rio Grande and the Santa Fe. Additionally, Lake George ice went to the cities of Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver and many more places along the Front Range and eastern plains. Lake George ice was even shipped to Rocky Ford for packing their famous melons.

Once ice harvest season began around late December or early January, one of the first chores was to clear the harvest area of frozen snow. Usually, a conventional farmer’s disc was pulled behind horses to break up the snow. Then horses would pull scrapers that cleared the snow down to the glare ice. After the snow and any other debris were cleared, a set of grid lines was then laid out. This allowed the horse-drawn scorer, which made deep penetrating grooves in the ice, to score a straight line. After a few passes with the scorer, the workers would then start cutting the ice along the grid lines with hand saws.

The Colorado Midland would have boxcars on the siding in front of the Lake George Ice House taking on ice. Forty-five to 50 cars a day were shipped from Lake George with each car capable of holding 23 tons.

The Colorado Midland and the Ice House is what produced the town of Lake George. In the mid 1890s it boasted three blacksmith shops, a hotel, dance hall, two stores, a number of residences and three saloons. In 1914, Lake George even had a very short-lived newspaper, the Lake George Echo. The lake became a favorite recreational spot for boating and fishing in the summer and ice skating in the winters. Special railroad excursions were arranged to bring tourists from Colorado Springs to the lake in the morning and return them at night.

In 1918, the Colorado Midland Railroad saw its last regular passenger train leave Grand Junction on Aug. 4 and arrive at Colorado Springs the next day, ending 31 years of service.

A small number of freights ran for a few more years on CM track, like to Lake George for ice and Hartsel for wool. But in the fall of 1921 the scrap train was ripping up the rails from New Castle to Divide. The ice operation was then moved to Coulson Lake in Divide by the same operator of the Lake George ice house.