In the early 1800s, entrepreneur Frederic Tudor turned ice into a commercial trade, exporting natural ice harvested in the Northeast to southern U.S. cities, the West Indies, and other places despite widespread skepticism. Ice bound for places such as DeBary Hall moved through a far-reaching network of warehouses, sea and rail shipping, and carriers that included St. Johns River steamboats, then traveled from the boat landing by mule cart to fill the ice house in great four-foot-tall hogheads packed in sawdust. By the 1800s, the deBarys could also obtain artificial ice from nearby plants such as one in Deland, though one product was said to taste like ammonia. Local enthusiasm for factory-made ice helped bring about the decline of America’s long-distance ice trade, but at its height that trade connected warm, remote places to a perishable luxury that added to the appeal of DeBary Hall.