The frame ice house was one of deBarys’ early outbuildings and, from the retreat’s start in the 1870s, helped visitors and cooks at DeBary Hall. At first, the estate’s ice came from northern rivers, lakes, and ice farms, packed in sawdust and shipped to Jacksonville in ocean vessels before being loaded into warehouses or river steamers. Although some settlers found that little survived the journey inland, some ice definitely reached Enterprise and DeBary Hall, where it cooled beef and sea turtles in the ice house and supplied the kitchen’s large ice box. Later, local plants furnished ice in the region, and electric refrigerators eventually made ice boxes obsolete, after which the old ice house became a storage shed.