
Perhaps it would be better to ask, "What was Iceville?" The name would imply that Iceville was a pleasant but cold little town with the usual shops along Main Street surrounded by a small residential section similar to most towns in the San Luis Valley.
Before 1930 there was no Iceville, and Iceville never was a town, just a place. This place began on July L 7, 1930, when the Trinchera Irrigation District, which included the Blanca area and which owned Smith Reservoir on Trinchera Creek, granted A. W. Olsen and W. W McClintock the right to cut ice on Smith Reservoir. The Irrigation District leased these two gentlemen land at the west end of the reservoir on which to build an ice storage house.
The year 1930 was in the period when vegetables of all kinds were grown throughout the San Luis Valley for shipment to the major markets in the Midwest. The object of the deal with Olsen and McClintock was to furnish ice for the refrigerator cars loaded on the San Luis Valley Southern Railway which passed Smith Reservoir just a short distance to the west. On August 27, 1930, Olsen and McClintock entered into a contract with the San Luis Valley Southern to build the icehouse and to build a siding to it. At this time the San Luis Valley Southern Railway established the station known as Iceville 3.3 miles south of Blanca, but Iceville was not a town.
Excerpt for the San Luis Valley Historical Society - Historian - Volume 21, Issue 4, 1989
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