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Steamboats and other ships used to pass by Dubuque because there was no place to pull out of the current. If they stayed in the current for the winter their ships would be crushed by ice. A place was needed to protect the boats. That is why the Ice Harbor was built in Dubuque. The Ice Harbor was used as shelter for boats, and was also an important place for manufacturing. |
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| The early business development of Dubuque was made hard because of barriers that blocked steamboat landings. Transportation for boats in the channel was difficult because of many islands that were scattered all over the place. | |
| Around 1836 a plan was made to cut a canal that was about a third-mile long that would link the river bank to an inner slough that had a steamboat landing on it. Even though a public meeting was held, nothing happened. A board of trustees was then put together in 1837. The first law made by the board called for anything that blocked the slough to be removed. A committee carried out the order as well as they could. A group of Dubuque businessmen were given the right to dig a canal through an island that was at he end of Second Street. The project was named Waples Cut. Two years after the right was given, the project was not even done. At the end of the 1850’s, Jones, Third, and Seventh Street went all the way to the river. A better riverfront was needed. | |
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In 1880 Congressional financing was needed to make a harbor for boats to stay in during the winter. The US Army Corps of Engineering looked at a few places before it decided to widen and dredge Waples Cut. They were going to make a harbor that went six feet under the water level. It had to be big enough to have enough room for fifty barges and twenty steamboats. In 1882 Congress gave 20,000 dollars and some land was bought by Caleb H. Booth and H.L. Stout. Then Congress gave another 20,000 dollars for the harbor in 1884. Most of the work was done in 1885. |
| Besides being a safe place for ships, the Ice Harbor turned into an important place for shipbuilding. The Iowa Iron Works and then the Dubuque Boat and Boiler Works were in the ice harbor. The companies built ships on the north side of the harbor. | |
| The Ice Harbor was a place for recreation also. People could come there to ice skate during the winter. An ice skating rink was fenced off in the harbor in the harbor. This was discontinued because of safety issues. | |
| An inventor named Norman Wiard tried to make an ice boat. People wanted a vehicle that could go over the ice. There was an attempt at making a vehicle like this, a boat with runners and skates on the bottom of it. It was going to be a steam powered ice boat. Norman Wiard came to Dubuque a couple of times to show models and advertise his boat. His ice boat didn’t make it to the ice though. While it was getting moved from its storage spot to the ice, one of the runners hit something and it broke. Wiard never tried to make another ice boat. | |
| The ice from the Dubuque Ice Harbor was also used for food preservation. It was cut into fifty or one hundred pound blocks, and buried in sawdust in special storage buildings. This would stop the ice from melting. When it was delivered, an ice pick and an ax was used to cut it. The customer would tell the delivery man how big of a chunk of ice that they wanted, by putting a card in their window. The color of the card would tell the delivery man what size of a block of ice that was wanted. Then he would cut it to the size that they wanted. The ice was placed inside a wooden chest called an ice box that was used as a refrigerator. | |
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Bibliography Lyon, Randolph W. Dubuque :The Encyclopedia. Dubuque Iowa: Union Hoermann Press, 1991. Photos Courtesy of Center for Dubuque History. Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa. |
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