× Expand Courtesy of Stephen Walker Lemp Brewery Ice Houses & Shipping Yard , Lower Depot, 1893

The influence of the St. Louis brewing industry has spread well beyond the borders of the Gateway City. The Lemp Brewery was one of the first to brew lager beer in America, and in the second half of the 20th century, Anheuser-Busch grew to be the largest brewer in the United States. Both breweries pioneered the use of refrigeration, hiring the famous engineer and architect Theodore Krausch to construct the first cold storage warehouses for beer in St. Louis, while their smaller competitors were still dragging winter ice up from the Mississippi River for their lagering cellars. However, both Lemp and Anheuser-Busch still needed ice for their revolutionary refrigerated railcars—so they maintained an almost completely forgotten but critical business relationship with a small town in north central Illinois.

× Expand Courtesy of Bureau County Historical Society DePue Overlook

That small town was DePue, which sits on the Illinois River where its westward course through the prairie turns south towards St. Louis, about 200 miles away from its brewery customers. Up this way, the Illinois River is not as tightly constrained by levees as the Missouri and Mississippi rivers are, so in the bottomlands between the bluffs there are many sloughs and “lakes,” including Lake DePue, which sits between the eponymous town and the main Illinois River channel. Discovered by a French missionary in 1673, the lake became famous for its crystal-clear water, so it was logical that, as the harsh winters froze the waters, an ice industry grew up, employing farmers from the surrounding Bureau County.[i]

One of the earliest pioneers of the ice trade was Captain Charles Stedman, a native of Suffolk, England, who immigrated to first Canada and then to the United States. While first working as a sailor, he eventually settled down in Bureau County, where he worked for other early ice merchants in Peru, east of DePue. Because the Illinois River froze over in the winter, Stedman would wait until spring to head south to St. Louis, beginning a working relationship with Hughes, Loomis and Co. here in 1858. A history book from 1885 describes his new relationship with the Lemp Brewery:

“In 1876 he began in his present business for William J. Lemp, of the Western Brewery, St. Louis, Mo. The business has grown so that now instead of having the two or three barges with which they commenced, they have fourteen barges, steamboat, etc., and a storing capacity for 50,000 tons of ice, with three steam elevators, and everything complete for the extensive business they carry on. They expend annually at DePue about $27,000 for labor, repairs, etc. Everything is complete for repairing or building of boats. Part of the time they employ 300 men during the winter season. The fourteen barges average 1,000 tons each, and each trip to St. Louis Capt. Stedman takes three barges and averages about one trip a week. Capt. Stedman is the manager of the entire business here and has through his management made a grand success of it.” [ii]

The ice harvesting operations lining Lake DePue were the subject of a fair amount of documentation at the time, and they showed up in later history books about the town. While none of the ice houses or docks remain, photographs of a later ice business and Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps can create an idea of what the operations may have entailed. A Lemp souvenir book published for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 corroborated that the brewery possessed “privileges in DePue, IL, where its storage facilities have 50,000-ton capacity.”[iii]

A local history book also claims that the breweries erected an even larger ice house with a capacity of 60,000 tons and later another with a capacity of 40,000 tons. The barges had a capacity of 800 to 1400 tons each and were brought to Lake DePue before winter froze the river. The population of the town was still quite small in the federal census, so much of the work force must have been seasonal as mentioned above.[iv]

× Expand Courtesy of Stephen Walker Lemp Brewery Ice Plant Proper Freezing Tanks of Ice Plant, 1893

Once the ice was packed in the giant ice houses, William Lemp bought at least one steamboat, perhaps the Joseph Fleming, to bring the ice down to St. Louis. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published regular arrivals and departures and “Levee Lore” or “Wharf Notes,” and in those records, a schedule of the Lemp Brewery’s ice-barge steamboats develops, matching the 1885 description of Stedman’s weekly trips. For example, on April 27, 1885, the Joseph Fleming arrived in St. Louis towing two ice scows and left with two “empties for the Lemp Brewery.[v] Then, right on schedule, the Joseph Fleming arrived back in St. Louis on May 4, 1885, from Lake DePue, unloading three ice scows, and promptly leaving with five “empties” for Lake DePue the same day.[vi]

Mysteriously, in the middle of its busy runs towing ice barges, the Joseph Fleming was destroyed on the wharf in DePue, due to “the work of an incendiary.” Luckily for William Lemp, the boat, which was at least a year old,[vii] was insured.[viii] Two other steamboats, the Polar Wave and the Jack Frost, also plied the route between DePue and St. Louis for the Lemp ice trade in 1886, probably replacing the Joseph Fleming after its destruction.[ix]

Interestingly, while Lemp was advertising of its water rights and ice capacity in DePue, it was already operating an ice-producing plant at its brewery in St. Louis, boasting a capacity of “150 tons of artificial ice” in one day’s time.[x] Why continue the natural ice trade when the brewery was producing its own right here in St. Louis? Perhaps the DePue ice was saved for “premium” use and the mass-produced ice from the brewery’s 1892 plant was used to operate refrigerated railcars.[xi] Massive ice houses are still visible in an illustration in the souvenir book, and their location near the river support the continued importation from DePue-originated river barges. Regardless, by the early 20th century, photographs and Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps show only the F. L. Powers & Co. Ice Houses still standing near Lake DePue. Industry had moved on.

× Expand Courtesy of Bureau County Historical Society Powers Ice in DePue, Illinois

Today, the Lemp ice houses and wharf are a park.[xii]

But we still have a few windows into their vanished past.

The author would like to thank David Gugerty, Curator, Bureau County Historical Society; Liam Moran, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Stephen Walker.

[i] History of DePue: DePue Centennial Celebration, September 13-18, 1961. DePue, Ill. Centennial Committee. History Committee, 1961. Pp. 17-18.

[ii] Bradsby, Henry C., ed. “Biographical Sketches – Capt. Charles Stedman,” History of Bureau County. Chicago: World Publishing Company, 1885. Pp. 660-661.

[iii] Lemp Souvenir Book, 1893. P. 4.

[iv] The population of DePue in the 1880 census was 323; it had grown to only 455 in 1890, demonstrating that the ice business was truly seasonal if the 300 member workforce is to be believed.

[v] “The River: Arrivals, Departures, Wharf Notes,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vol. XXXIII, No. 264 (April 27, 1885, p. 3.

[vi] “The River: Arrivals, Departures, Wharf Notes,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vol. XXXIII, No. 269 (May 4, 1885), p. 3.

[vii] “The River: Arrivals, Departures,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vol. XXXII, No. 268 (May 10, 1884), p. 3.

[viii] St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vol. XXXIII, No. 303 (June 13, 1885), p. 1; The Waterloo Press, Vol. XXVII, No. 42 (June 18, 1885), p. 2. Another newspaper article from the same week, while giving a different name for the boat, the “Joe F. Leetma,” is almost certainly describing the burning of the Joseph Fleming, and gives an insurance value of $30,000, [“The Leetma Burned,” The Nebraska State Journal, Vol. XV, No. 277 (June 13, 1885), p. 1]. This was a substantial amount of money at the time, based off comparisons of the construction costs listed on building permits for the Lemp Brewery.

[ix] For the Polar Wave, see “Local River Report, Arrivals, Departures, Levee Lore,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vol. XXXVI, No. 242 (April 8, 1886), p. 3; “Local River Report, Arrivals, Departures, Levee Lore,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vol. XXXVI, No. 246 (April 13, 1886), p. 3. For the Jack Frost, see “Local River Report, Arrivals, Departures, Levee Lore,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vol. XXXVI, No. 245 (April 12, 1886), p. 3.

[x] Lemp Souvenir Book, 1893. P. 4; “Wm. J. Lemp’s Brewery,” Pen and Sunlight Sketches of St. Louis, the Commercial Gateway to the South. Phoenix Publishing Co., 1892. P. 122.

[xi] Stiritz, Mimi. “Lemp Brewery,” Benton Park National Register Nomination, 1978, rev. 1985. P. 5.