Winter ice cooling Dodge City beer

TL;DR -- We point to an article/answer on Quora dealing with cooling beverages of the alcoholic type in Dodge City, say around the time of Marshal Earp. The article points back to Wisconsin, but ice collection happened all along the northern border in the winter months. The technology of cooling has an interesting history which we will look at in order to get a focus beyond the shenanigans to the computational crowd. 

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Quora has accumulated a lot of great articles over its  years. These are written as answers to questions. Of late, we are seeing more with pictures from the past. Photos, that is, which we hope are of sufficient provenance to use for research. Right now, this problem is only an idea, for the most part, as fakery has been easy to spot. 

But, it's getting harder. So, we will be addressing that from a technical sense. For now, we will be looking at old photos. We have referenced articles of Erik Painter several times, mostly with respect to the over 100 years of frontier experience that brought the U.S. (us) to today from the start 400+ years ago. The frontier experience exploded post the U.S. Revolution. There are lots of tales to tell about this as we look at the expansion across the interior. On the other side of the matter, Erik Painter has posted well-written articles about Native American culture and the impact on it that the past 200 years has had. 

Today, though, we go to Dodge City, KS. Here is a link to the question and answer: 

• In old episodes of Gunsmoke, Miss Kitty frequently offers Marshal Dillon a cold beer at the Longbranch Saloon. In the days before electricity, how could the beer have been chilled?

Erik showed photos of ice being gathered and shipped. The railroad arrived in the area in the early 1870s. So, shipment would have been regular. Ice could be stored until almost the end of summer under the proper conditions up north. We will look at that further. 

This photo is of a drawing of what an iced railcar delivery adult beverages would have looked like.  

This was a great answer as it pointed to a part of the culture of the early times. A recent article described how some in New Hampshire are trying to keep the "traditon alive" and has photos depicting some of the work and processes. 

Ice Harvesting in
New Hampshire

Switching to a more family-oriented topic, this is actually an issue of technology which is more than the computational flimflam of late. There will be a later post on the history of ice cream in the west as John's family had an early diary in southeast Kansas with an outlet in Oswego, KS in the latter part of the 1800s and early 1900s. As the technology improved, they shipped on the Katy railroad all the way to Kansas City.  

Looking at the history, Washington even had a taste for the sweet and icy stuff. New York had a parlor for this product in the 1770s. But, the interest in cold refreshments go back much further. 

Remarks: Modified: 03/31/2024

03/31/2024 --