A recent post about a curious-looking implement with the Duluth Coolerator brand name led me down a surprisingly challenging research path. When did people (in Duluth and elsewhere) stop using “ice boxes” and start using modern electric refrigerators?

Modern Duluthians think of “ice box” as the old-fashioned term, but it seems the word “refrigerator” was used just as often to refer to big boxes that incorporated ice and lots of insulation to stay cool. Hence, the original Coolerator. I am seeing hints of desperation here; the Coolerator company and the East End Ice and Coal Company (see above ad from May 29, 1934 in the Duluth Herald) was attempting to tell consumers to hold onto the idea of using ice, even as electric refrigeration was being pushed by the electric company and others. See below for an ad and contest announcement from 1939; those marketers were moving in on the old ice box.

Below is an excerpt from that article. Thirty thousand of the local power company customers were still without electric refrigeration convenience.

I just find it somewhat mind boggling that within the living memory of people still in Duluth, the idea of preserving food moved from using big blocks of ice to purely an electric thing … with no real change of terminology. And I don’t see any evidence of an ice company or the Coolerator company by the 1960s. Things change fast!