The only ice I want to see this winter is on Island ponds.
With the cold temperatures, I am dreaming of skating outside. A friend recently mentioned her memories of outdoor ice skating and lamented that her kids may not be able to experience what had been an annual pleasure for her as a child. Blame climate change or not, but the science is clear that winters are not as cold as they have been in the past.
Consider this interesting historical Island industry as proof that our winters have changed. At one time, ice harvesting was a solid way to make money in the desolate Vineyard winter. In Lindsey Lee’s Vineyard Voices, Islanders share stories of their remembrances of a business gone by.
Twentieth-century West Tisbury commercial fisher Franklin Benson noted the number of folks involved in the industry. He estimated that the ice houses employed about 60 people, six to eight per ice house, and mainly they worked after hours: “at twelve o’clock at night and worked until morning, then people came on at seven o’clock. Generally, a moonlit night because that’s cold, cold weather then.”
Benson worked at Ice House Pond, also known as Old House Pond, and now known as the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank’s Manaquayak Preserve. That pond was acknowledged as one of the best harvesting ponds due to its depth, clarity and lack of sediment and vegetative debris. From 1908 through 1953, the Vineyard Ice Company operated an ice harvest there, employing gantries, conveyor belts, sleds and storehouses — equipment run by a Model T engine and/or horses.
Wages were decent, according to Benson, who knew “work was pretty shy in the wintertime,” and the pay was “pretty good – fifty cents an hour, maybe sixty.”
Mill Pond was also an ice pond, according to historian and poet Dionis Coffin Riggs, who lived just down the lane from West Tisbury’s iconic pond. She explained how it was done: “They had a machine that marked it in squares. A horse would drag the machine, so the ice had to be pretty thick. Then they would take big saws and saw down these marks and then they would make one row somehow. And push these out onto a ramp in a truck wagon. Then it would be taken to the ice house and stored with hay. The ice house was in back of that house next to the police station on the Mill Pond.”
In Oak Bluffs, Crystal Lake was another source of ice, though it was of lesser quality than the others. There were some rules to consider in order to have the best ice. Keep the pond shoveled, folks in the know would insist, to keep the ice from melting. The snow atop the ice would create enough insulation to heat the surface ice, which would make the ice soft. Ice would have been cut when it is 12 to 18 inches thick, and in good years two cuts might be possible.
Today, we are often on thin ice if there is any on the ponds. Before the weather warms up, do take the time to get out and enjoy this historically frigid winter. Ice hockey lovers, skaters and others, blow your whistles, sharpen your skates and celebrate when the ice is out for all.
Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.
This article appears in February 6, 2026.