The San Francisco call., 1898-02-27

" HE Truckee River furnishes San . Francisco with most of it's ice.
 The ice is not taken from the large lakes-Lake Tahoe and Lake Donner-for the former :: does not freeze at all. and the latter freezes to a depth inadequate to yield merchantable ice. The ice lakes or ponds are mostly made by damming the river, and the average-sized pond covers 160 acres and is from four to six teen feet in depth. There are no less than ten of these ponds on the course of the river, and two are in the arms of canyons which embrace feeders of the river.
 :. The twelve ponds are controlled by eight companies or firms, most of them having their head offices in San Fran cisco.
 . There would seem to be some kind of agreement existing among them as to the market price of ice, as there is one concern in the river which has it's plant leased to a San Francisco ice company. who pay 1t s12,O00 per year merely to hold its plant out of use, or $30,000 per year if it wishes to fill it's storage-house with ice, and hold the same, subject to the orders of the company. It Is also stated that where the plant people have .availed themselves of this offer, but few carloads of ice have been taken from their house during the summer season, and they have had, in winter, to replace only this small quantity to keep their storage house filled.
 The thermometer goes down to 15 de- grees below zero along this river, and ice cutting begins early in December It starts early, just as soon as the wa ter is frozen to a sufficient thickness, in order that the ice may be gotten under cover before snow falls. Snow is a serious and depressing incident to an . ice producer. A heavy snowfall after freezing has set in, may ruin his en- tire crop. It falls upon the ice, sinks the ice sheet by reason of its weight. below the water; the water rises to the level of the surface of the snow. and freezing again ensues. This proc ess produces merchantably worthless Ice. The ice instead of being clear, transparent. bright, is white. opaque and dull. It Is good enough for refrig- orator purposes. but is undesirable for other kinds of consumption, and when the pond gets in this condition the ice Is not cut at all.
 When snow falls, therefore, the ice producer hurries his crew forthwith to clean it off, and many scrapers are brought into reQuistion. The con- gealed precipitation is gotten off and piled around the banks of the lake. This is an expensive process, for it costs about s100 an inch of depth to clear the snow from pond of 160 acres. If the snow is inches. therefore. the cost is $500, and if several of these falls occur before the ice is frozen deep enough to cut, the profits of the enter prise for that season become very ma terially reduced.
 Merchantable ice must not be less than inches nor more than 14 inches thick. It is then cut into blocks 22x30 inches in size, and for that sized block each inch of ice weighs twenty pounds A block 12 inches thick, therefore, weighs 240 pounds. These blocks are cut from the ice sheet by horse draw ing over it a saw guided by a man, as a blow is guided, which saw cuts seam through the ice to depth within four feet of the bottom of the stratum This leaves the ice layer sufficiently