A Lake Built to Harvest Ice
The History Hidden Under Round Lake
In the grip of a hot July afternoon, it’s easy to take cold for granted. Central air hums behind closed doors. Ice cubes tumble from fridge dispensers. Freezer aisles glow in every supermarket, their chill so steady it barely registers. Cold is constant now, predictable, silent, and unremarkable. But not long ago, it was something we had to earn. Before refrigeration, ice was a seasonal harvest. It was hauled from frozen lakes in the dead of winter, stacked in sawdust-insulated icehouses, and rationed out through the long, hot months. Round Lake, in Saratoga County, Upstate New York, once played a part in that forgotten system.
This is the story of that system, and how it reshaped the lake we see today, a reminder that the landscapes we inherit often hold histories deeper and more fascinating than we know.
It sits quietly among the hills of southern Saratoga County in Upstate New York, its surface rippling in the breeze. Recreational boaters drift near the shore. The village that bears its name rises gently behind it, porches, steeples, sidewalks, creating the illusion of permanence. Round Lake feels settled. Stable. Complete.
But beneath its still surface lies a layered story. One of glacial legacy, altered wetlands, industrial labor, and quiet erasure. Round Lake is natural. It is also engineered.
The Glacier’s Legacy
Geologists classify Round Lake as a kettle lake, formed more than ten thousand years ago. As the glaciers retreated, stranded blocks of ice melted into the earth, collapsing the surrounding land and leaving deep depressions behind. Over time, seasonal runoff filled these basins. Sediment built up. Aquatic plants colonized the edges. The result was a shallow, ecologically dynamic wetland.
Colonial survey maps from the late 18th and early 19th centuries depict Round Lake with vague outlines, an irregular shape, often labeled “swamp” or “wet meadow.” Its shoreline meandered. Cattails and sedges filled the lowlands. Water pooled and retreated with the seasons, offering habitat for amphibians, waterfowl, and insect life. What we now call Round Lake was once part of a complex, seasonal floodplain.
The Anthony Kill, a modest stream today, drains the lake’s southern end. But the valley it follows is far wider than such a stream would need. That mismatch is a clue. The Anthony Kill is the remnant of a glacial outflow channel, cut by torrents of meltwater that once surged off the Mohawk Valley, carving wide paths for seasonal floods.
These wetlands worked. They filtered runoff, trapped sediment, and absorbed excess water before it reached the Hudson. They hosted a complex web of life and supported Indigenous communities who fished, hunted, and traveled through them for thousands of years.
But by the 19th century, these values were overlooked. Wetlands were seen as impediments. They were drained, filled, and “reclaimed” in the name of progress.
That mindset would soon reshape Round Lake.
When Ice Became Commerce
In the mid-1800s, the perception of Round Lake shifted. Cold had value. The natural ice trade, one of the largest winter industries in the Northeast, required clean, consistent bodies of water and easy access to transportation. Round Lake, with its proximity to the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad, was well placed, but its irregular depth and marshy perimeter posed problems.
So it was altered.
Labor crews dredged the basin, hauling out centuries of muck and rooting vegetation. The shoreline was stabilized with berms and spoil. Inlets and outlets were narrowed to control flow. What had once been a soft-edged kettle lake became more elliptical, deeper, and uniform, engineered for function, not just form.
During drought or drawdown, remnants of this phase reappear: submerged pilings, stone footings, and irregular humps along the lakebed. These are the industrial bones of a forgotten ice economy, loading platforms, dock pilings, or the foundations of temporary icehouses.
Oral histories recall teams of horses dragging sledges across the frozen surface. Workers scored the ice with long-toothed saws, lifted it in blocks, packed it in sawdust, and loaded it directly onto railcars. It was seasonal work, but essential. The lake became, for a time, a machine for freezing and shipping.
Round Lake never rivaled the great operations of Rockland Lake or the Hudson River. But it played its part. For a brief chapter, it served the rhythm of labor, export, and extraction.
Cool Comfort, Hard Labor
Writing this in the middle of a hot July, it’s hard not to notice the steady hum of compressors. Air conditioners rattle in windows. Freezers line supermarket walls. Ice clinks in plastic cups on every porch.
Climate control is a quiet certainty now. Refrigeration, air conditioning, walk-in coolers, we move through cooled spaces without thinking about what it took to get here. But not long ago, cold was effort. Keeping something chilled required planning, labor, and infrastructure. In that world, winter wasn’t just a season. It was a harvest.
Before mechanical refrigeration, ice had to be cut, stored, and rationed across the year. Massive wooden icehouses were built along rivers and lakes, insulated with straw, sawdust, and bark. The blocks were stacked tightly, sometimes 30 feet high, to reduce melt. Some houses were double-walled. Many had drainage systems to manage runoff.
Ice harvested in January might not be touched until July. But if stacked right, protected from light and air, it would last. Some of the largest icehouses, like those used by the Knickerbocker Ice Company, could hold tens of thousands of tons, enough to chill entire cities.
The stored ice cooled milk in railcars, lined the walls of delivery wagons, and kept beer cold in basement taps. It was shaved into snow for hospitals and pressed against fresh meat. In upper-class homes, it fed the icebox. In tenement kitchens, it delayed spoilage by a few hours. In many cities, children chased the delivery cart, hoping for broken chunks tossed from the back.
This system was massive. By the late 1800s, New York City alone consumed over a million tons of ice each year. Entire rail networks and labor unions were built around it. And lakes like Round Lake played their part, even if only briefly.
Now, cold comes with a switch. Food moves coast to coast inside refrigerated trailers. Our homes stay steady at 72 degrees no matter what the sky does. The fragility of seasonal cold has been replaced by the permanence of grid-fed chill.
But the history of refrigeration lives in the lakes, the rail sidings, the half-sunken pilings that once anchored storage sheds. Round Lake holds a faint echo of that older world, when cold had to be carried from one season to the next, and ice was something you earned with sweat, saws, and silence.
Layers Beneath the Surface
Even today, the lake carries the evidence.
Sediment cores taken from the deepest part of Round Lake reveal a lower layer of dark, oxygen-poor muck, typical of ancient kettle basins. But above that lie more recent layers: coarser, more uniform fill, occasionally interrupted by fragments of wood, stone, or rusted metal.
These are the signatures of reshaping. They speak to a landscape edited by human hands.
The lake’s smooth profile, consistent depth, and striking clarity all point to an engineered system. Most natural kettle lakes have uneven edges and turbid water, especially after spring runoff. Round Lake’s clean lines suggest control.
Even its silence is structured.
Another Transformation
As refrigeration improved and larger, deeper lakes to the north outpaced Round Lake’s modest harvests, the industrial chapter came to a close. But a new one was already beginning.
In 1868, a group of Methodist revivalists founded the Round Lake Camp Meeting Association on the lake’s western shore. What began as a summer tent revival quickly grew into a lakeside village of gingerbread cottages, a library, a music hall, and public greens. Hymns replaced saws. Faith replaced freight.
The icehouses were reclaimed by the landscape. The docks slipped beneath the surface and disappeared. The village changed, but the lake remained, no longer a machine, but a centerpiece.
Ghosts of the Wetland
And yet, not all was erased.
At the southern edge of the lake, where the Anthony Kill begins its descent toward the Hudson, lies the Round Lake Preserve, a 90-acre parcel protected by Saratoga PLAN. Here, the land still breathes in seasonal rhythms. Pools rise and fall. Frogs call. Birds nest.
While no formal excavation has been documented at Round Lake, archaeological surveys throughout the region have uncovered evidence of early Indigenous presence. Mohican tools and charred bone fragments found along similar lakefront and riverine sites suggest seasonal hunting and fishing here long before dredges or cottages arrived.
Many species that once populated the broader basin, American bitterns, marsh wrens, pickerel frogs, have disappeared from the main lake, but they persist in these protected margins, clinging to what’s left of the ancestral wetland.
A Place Made to Look Unmade
Lakes often carry an aura of timelessness. But Round Lake challenges that notion. It is the product of glacial ice and human labor, ecological inheritance and industrial ambition.
Its beauty is real. So is its construction.
The lake wasn’t built from scratch. It was transformed with effort and intention, then absorbed back into the landscape. Over time, those efforts softened. Platforms sank. Memories thinned. And the altered became assumed.
Memory, Water, and What We Forget
Round Lake tells a story of quiet transformation, of how the landscapes we anchor our lives to are often built on foundations we no longer see. Shorelines once dredged by hand have become walking paths. Icehouses, once vital to a winter economy, have collapsed into the soil. And over time, the engineered shape of the lake settled into the comforting illusion of permanence.
Today, it appears complete. Still. Natural. As though it has always been here.
But beneath the water lies the record of labor. A geometry shaped by industry. The faint imprint of tools and hands, of berms and channels made to serve commerce and survival. The lake is both landscape and artifact, formed by the glacier, reshaped by ambition.
There was a time, just beyond living memory, when this place was a machine. When its surface froze to order, and men harvested blocks of ice as if from a quarry. What seems tranquil now once pulsed with seasonal urgency.
We inherit these places without always knowing what they once were. But the land remembers. In the depth of a shoreline curve or the submerged frame of a vanished dock, memory persists. And in that persistence is a reminder: what feels natural may, in truth, be curated. What seems timeless may be the residue of work long past.
Round Lake, like so many places, holds layers. To live here is to live atop those layers, whether we see them or not.
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Documentation and Further Reading
Primary and Archaeological Sources
Curtin Archaeological Consulting, Inc. Phase 3 Archaeological Data Recovery Report, Athens Generating Project. Albany, NY: Prepared for Athens Generating Company, L.P., 2001.
https://nysarchaeology.org/download/nysaa/bulletin/number_096.pdfDiamond, Joseph E., and Susan O’Connell Stewart, eds. Current Research in New York Archaeology: A.D. 700–1300. New York State Museum Record, Vol. 2. Albany, NY: The New York State Education Department, 2015.
https://www.nysm.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/nysmrecord-vol2_0-3.pdfHartgen Archaeological Associates, Inc. Phase IA Cultural Resource Assessment Survey for the Zim Smith Trail Extension Project, Towns of Ballston, Malta, and Round Lake Village, Saratoga County, New York. Albany, NY: Prepared for Saratoga County Planning Department, 2014.
United States National Park Service. Archaeological Overview and Assessment: Saratoga National Historical Park, Stillwater, New York. Boston, MA: NPS Northeast Region, 2004.
https://www.npshistory.com/publications/sara/aoa.pdf
Regional and Interpretive Context
Adirondack Life. “A History in Fragments.” Adirondack Life, July 13, 2016.
https://www.adirondacklife.com/2016/07/13/a-history-in-fragments/National Park Service. Saratoga Lake–Fish Creek Archaeological District National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1995.
https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/a9cc2978-bf93-4251-a5af-7385ded37392Wikipedia contributors. “Lamoka Site.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Last modified July 2, 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamoka_site
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