Excerpt from
When Celery Was King by Charlie C. Carlson. The excerpt includes an image of the Rand Yard Ice House with accompanying text. The Rand Yard Ice House was located on Rand Yard Road in Sanford, Florida. The ice plant was built in 1926 by the Mountain Ice Company of Chicago, had a 700 ton storage capacity, operated 24 hours a day, ranked second in the U.S. for ice production, and was once Seminole County's largest building for somet time. During the late-1800s, individual ice factories were comprised of a machine room, boiler room, ice store, loading platforms, and other office space. Large cans were used to mold the ice. When ice was needed, workers would operate a crane system to carry the ice block into a warm water bath where the ice could be removed from the reusable can. Although working at an ice plant was known as dangerous and hard work, employees enjoyed a steady well paid job. By 1928, the Rand Yard Ice House employed 73 African-American workers.