Snapshots of History by Mike Avitt

By Editor | April 22, 2026 |

I took this week’s photo in September 2004. It shows the ice house that sat behind the old Watterson Store. It was probably Neil Johnston who directed my attention to an outbuilding that I would most likely overlook. I took a photo of the front of the store the same day. Everything in both those pictures is gone today.
Long ago, ice was cut out of ponds and lakes, cut into blocks and stored in insulated ice houses for summer use. These storage buildings often had dug out dirt floors and the ice blocks were packed in sawdust for insulation. Also, the sawdust making contact with the ice would swell with moisture and create a seal around the ice. All one had to do to clean the ice was rinse it with water.
Rural Ringgold County began to get electricity in 1945, so by 1946 this ice house was obsolete and probably converted into a storage building. Thank goodness it was still standing in 2004. Even if you didn’t know this was an ice house, an expert may have been able to discern the function by looking at the hardware on the door (oversized hinges) and the shape of the building. An expert or…….Artificial Intelligence.
I know very little about AI, but I can see the potential. Imagine being able to see all of Ringgold County’s plat maps at the same time. Imagine being able to see every land transfer and deed at the same time. It’s coming.
The two photos I took in 2004 – could AI combine those pictures into a panorama and show the same scene as it appeared in different decades? Yes, it’s coming. It might be here now! And that would be so cool.
I have another photo of some outbuildings, trees and a driveway but no house. A fairly mundane picture. But, with location information, AI could inform us about previous owners and functions of the property that would make the photo much more valuable historically.
My point is photographs will be enhanced physically and historically. AI will identify things in pictures that we can’t explain.
Richard Pence asked me about Snapshots of History articles I’ve written about Mount Ayr restaurants. I have been working on rearranging my articles by topic for six weeks. I’m not half done yet. There are 736 articles, some of which have duplicates, plus the feature articles I’ve written. But, this is important because I need to know my omissions. I would like to gather all my Mount Ayr restaurant articles together and somehow get them into Richard’s hands.
I would also like to put my railroad articles together and see what AI would do with them. AI will probably have access to timetables, books, maps and records I’ve never known about. I would like to know about early construction of trestles and how so much earth was moved with primitive means.
Now, Knowlton. A book about Knowlton’s history has not been written, but I’ve written about 15 articles about this ghost town. Put all those articles together and you have a story.
Another thing I’ve noticed as I sort articles is how many deal with histories outside of Ringgold County. I’ve written about the railroad amusement park at Creston, the history of Blockton, the railroad and depot at Grant City, Mo., the ghost town of Tuskeego (Decatur County) and so on.
I have been personally involved in the technology evolution of historical research for the last 25 years. I know the advancements that have been made and I know more will be made. I get asked questions regularly that I can’t answer, but the answers are coming.

Posted in Snapshot of History by Mike Avitt