A Bit of Bike Path (and Blount Family) History in Barrington

The Blount family and their various namesake businesses – the clam shacks in Warren, East Providence, Providence and Fall River; the market in Warren; the company store in Fall River – go back generations in the East Bay, so it's no wonder that they would want to sponsor a blog about the East Bay Bike Path. However, the connection to the bike path goes deeper than just broad East Bay roots: there is also a very specific connection to a very specific place along the path.

Riders passing by Lombardi Park in Barrington may note one of several plaques along the way offering bits of bike path history. This one tells the story of the Blount Family and their connection to "Little Echo", as the adjacent pond is known. This flooded claypit was used by area residents as a source of ice since the 1800s, and in 1918 the Willis E. Blount Ice Company was founded on its banks to provide ice for the Blount Oyster Company in Warren. An ice house was built on the pond's west bank to store huge blocks of ice harvested from the frozen water.

Back in these days before in-home refrigeration, the ice was harvested during the colder months, when workers would actually go out onto the frozen surface with saws and cut thick blocks from it. Those blocks would then be pushed onto a conveyor belt and brought into the ice house where they were stacked in layers of sawdust. Believe it or not, in the right weather conditions that simple method could keep the blocks frozen well into the summer.

The ice from Little Echo would be packed into railroad cars to keep Blount Oysters chilled during transport. But Blount Ice was also available to home customers as well. Residents were provided with one-square-foot cards bearing the numbers 25, 50, 75 and 100. They would simply post the card in a front window with the number of pounds they wanted facing up, and the Blount Company would deliver it straight to their iceboxes. Think about that next time you take that ice maker in your freezer for granted.

Of course, when in-home refrigeration became the norm in the '40s, ice delivery became a thing of the past. The Blount family sold the property in 1944, and a 1965 fire claimed the old ice house; a private residence now stands in its place. In 1971, the Lombardi family bought the property, and later donated 3.4 acres of it – including the pond – to the Barrington Land Conservation Trust. That spot is now Lombardi Park, where bikers can pass by and read the story of the Blount family's old ice house.