PARKERVILLE--Horse-drawn vehicles transported many vacationers to resorts in the early days of the vacation industry, Tents were used to house the visitors but the ladies wore fancy dresses, anyway, and often stayed two weeks. The above picture was taken at Parkerville on North Long Lake in the 1890s.

Ice was not only used for packing and shipping fish, it was the only means of refrigeration at that time.

The ice was taken during the winter by a regular crew of harvesters. (It was harvested much like grain in the early days.) Men worked together going from place to place filling ice houses.

Lake ice was sawed into square cakes and pulled from the lake with large ice tongs, loaded on horse-drawn sleds and carried to ice houses where the cakes were packed in sawdust. Layer after layer of these cakes were piled into the houses for next summer's use.

Cottage owners and early resorters gathered their ice from these houses each year.

CONVENTION VISITORS AT BRAINERD RAILROAD STATION--This picture was taken at the Brainerd railroad station early in the century when a group of newspapermen and their wives from Indiana visited the lake area. (Minnesota Historical Society photo.)