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Building a tradition: Community effort goes into creating the Eagle River Ice Castle

Phoebe Spier
/
WXPR

Silver Lake looks like a scene from a snow globe as snowflakes gently fall across the lake.

It’s a cold January morning, but it does nothing to deter the more than a dozen volunteers from the Eagle River Fire Department as they pull thousands of ice blocks from the lake.

It’s a laborious process.

The first day, the ice is scored into even blocks that are cut almost all the to water. The next day they’re cut all the way through.

Standing on a grid of ice blocks, two people saw in sync on either end of a row of several blocks. Then two people use long bars to gently break it free from the row next to it.

Katie Thoresen
/
WXPR

The log of ice blocks is pushed along the water’s surface, down a canal, and broken up into individual blocks that are put on a conveyor belt and slid into the back of a waiting pick up truck.

Katie Thoresen
/
WXPR

All 2,200 block need to come out of the lake on the same day, other wise the ice continues to grow making the block size difference hard to work with.

While firefighters handle the work on the lake, the drivers in the long line of pick-up trucks waiting to take the blocks to the downtown depot where the ice castle will be built are all community members volunteering to do their part to build the ice castle.

“It's not the fire department, it's a community effort,” said Mike Dreger, Captain for the Eagle River Fire Department.

He’s been with the department for 38 years, and he’s been helping build the ice castle for even longer.

Katie Thoresen
/
WXPR
Volunteers line up their trucks to help take the ice blocks from Silver Lake to downtown Eagle River.

“I have the claim to fame, in my opinion, that I even started helping the Lions Club before the fire department took over the responsibilities,” said Dreger.

Dreger was 18 when he helped build his first ice castle in 1976. He described that castle then a fairly simp eight wall with a couple of wings so it wouldn’t fall down and they built a chair.

“I looked at it and said, ‘We need some decorations on top. You know, I can take a chainsaw and just three quarters of the way up the block, you just cut a X and the block splits in half, but you have two points. You don't waste a block,’” said Dreger.

That’s exactly what he did as his first attempt at decorating the ice castle.

“Now, every castle, if you go to the fire department, see all the castles up on the wall, my wife and I call them ‘hoo-ha’s’. She's an artist, and she pushes me to do something more fantastic every year. This year it's just going to be a simple point,” said Dreger.

The first ice castle was built in 1933, spearheaded by Charles Hanke who owned the local icehouse.

They weren’t built during World War II but resumed shortly after the end of the war and have been become an annual tradition, when the weather cooperates.

“Weather dictates it. You're never going to hear the ice castle didn't get built because the firemen were lazy, and they didn't want to do it. It's always weather,” said Dreger.

In 1987, the Fire Department took charge of organizing the build.

The then-fire chief- Jack Thomas, grandson of Charles Hanke, designed the ice castles.

Since his passing a couple years ago, the current Fire Chief Michael Anderson designs the castles like Thomas did with Lego blocks, pulling inspiration for Thomas’ old design.

“In his honor, he kept all of his designs. Now, we're picking and choosing a tower from one castle with walls of a second one. We just keep Jack in the memory of the ice castle,” said Dreger.

The fire department even still uses the original ice harvesting tools.

Katie Thoresen
/
WXPR

More than 2,200 ice blocks were pulled from Silver Lake for this year’s design.

“It's one of the biggest ones we've done in a long time,” said Dreger.

Once the blocks are delivered and loaded onto pallets at the downtown depot, they’re sent through another conveyer belt and all shaved down to the same height.

“It's just like laying cement blocks at this point without mortar. We use water as our mortar,” said Jim Bonson as he explained why they have to go through this process.

Jim Bonson is a retired deputy chief, but still comes out to help build the ice castle. He grew up in Eagle River where visiting the ice castle each winter was part of his family’s tradition.

Katie Thoresen
/
WXPR

“When you grow up here, you love the ice castle, it just becomes part of winter. Winter is not winter without having an ice castle,” said Bonson.

Bonson has been helping build the ice castle now for more than 40 years.

He loves it so much he started tracking down and digitally preserving images from all the past years.

While the design of the castle may change from year to year, the community support for it never does.

“You can see the community is all fired up, jubilant, you know, we're having an ice castle again,” said Bonson.

It’s the first time in three years weather conditions have allowed the Fire Department to build the Ice Castle.

It took seven days from when the lake was scored to when the castle construction was finished.

It’s always timed to be up for the World Championship Snowmobile Derby which is happening this weekend.

The ice castle stays up as long as the weather cooperates.

Katie Thoresen
/
WXPR

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Katie Thoresen is WXPR's News Director/Vice President.
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