1. A photograph of two employees posing with the first ice manufactured in DeLand, Florida in 1886. Made in the Kingsbury Ice Plant near the railroad tracks on North Spring Garden Avenue. Frozen inside the first blocks of ice were, fresh fish, current newspapers, roses and oranges. Man-made ice was the world’s first means of artificial cooling. This brand new concept, that humans could produce cold, was a far-fetched idea for people in the mid-19th century. Floridian John Gorrie, M.D., (1803-1855) was granted the first U. S. Patent (No. 8080) for mechanical refrigeration in 1851 for his invention of the first ice machine in 1845. Gorrie is considered the father of air conditioning and mechanical refrigeration, yet he was ridiculed during his lifetime. It wasn’t until 1868 that the world’s first commercial ice plant opened in New Orleans, Louisiana. The first ice plant in Mississippi was built in Natchez in the late 1870s and the second plant in the state was the Morris Ice Company, which opened in Jackson in 1880.

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