Historic Ice Lake

Located just west of the Service and Supply Area at the south end of the Academy is Ice Lake.  A century ago, it was bustling with industry.  ----more----

During the winter, this lake, and several others in the Colorado Springs-Monument area, would freeze solid.  Workers would harvest the ice using a one-handed version of the loggers saw.  The ice, cut into blocks, would be used to preserve perishable food in early-day refrigerators, appropriately called “ice boxes.”  Pioneers establishing homesteads in the area that is now the Academy included Aaron and Martha Blodgett, namesake of nearby Blodgett Peak, and David Edgerton.  Edgerton was the namesake of a town that emerged where Ice Lake is today.  The local public school district, now called Academy District 20, got its start here in 1874.  It was organized by County Superintendent Robert Douglass, whose name is tied to the Academy’s Douglass Valley.  In its early days, the school district covered 36 square miles and The Edgerton School, located near the lake, was its only school.  With the establishment of the Air Force Academy in the 1950s, the school district quadrupled in size, expanding to 130 square miles.  The town of Edgerton, however, joined several other settlements on Academy grounds that disappeared.

 

 

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