On the edge of picturesque Cedar Lake in northwest Indiana, Cedar Lake Historical Association’s Museum at Lassen’s Resort offers visitors a tangible connection to the community’s history and heritage. Housed within a former hotel, the museum and its grounds showcase the story of Cedar Lake from the area’s earliest history to its resort-era heyday to its economic development over time.

Cedar Lake Historical Association, founded in 1977 by an all-volunteer team, saved the Lassen’s Resort Hotel as the last remaining hotel building from the height of Cedar Lake’s resort era (1880s-1930s). When the hotel opened in 1921, it boasted 65 rooms, one of the larger resorts on Cedar Lake, with offerings that once included bath houses, a waterslide, a diving platform, boat and automobile garages, an orchard, miniature golf, and more. The property was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1981 and since 1986 has operated as a museum showcasing local history. Today, the Museum at Lassen’s Resort includes multiple exhibits and experiences for guests recalling the lake’s recreational past, including a period-inspired dining room open to guests and lake cruises in a 1915 steamboat.

But the museum’s mission to illustrate Cedar Lake history goes far beyond highlighting recreational pastimes, as dedicated volunteers continue to expand exhibits with artifacts vital to preserving the community’s shared history and memories. For longtime residents and their families, local economic history can be traced closely to commercial ice harvesting, which began at Cedar Lake as early as 1880.

Cedar Lake Historical Association’s Taylor Ice Truck exhibit opened in May 2026. (Photo by Mitchell Knigga)

Before mechanical refrigeration, large amounts of lake ice, harvested in blocks up to 100 pounds, allowed food suppliers to cool box cars for the first time and transport perishable products much farther than had ever been possible. In the 1880s and 1890s, Cedar Lake became home to more than a dozen ice harvesting companies, a booming business due to the lake’s proximity to Chicago. In subsequent decades use of lake ice gradually gave way to artificial manufacturing plants that relied on distributors like Cedar Lake’s Taylor Ice Company, which operated from 1922 to 1988, to deliver their product to customers.

To share the importance of the local ice industry with a wider audience, Todd Taylor, grandson of Taylor Ice Company’s founder, chose to donate his family’s ice truck, a 1947 International Harvester KB-5, to Cedar Lake Historical Association in 2020. This May, the Museum at Lassen’s Resort dedicated the truck with a new pavilion and interpretive signage funded in part by a grant from Indiana Landmarks’ Indiana Automotive affinity group, recognizing the vehicle’s unique role as a link to Cedar Lake’s industrial heritage.

Located next to the museum and within Cedar Lake’s largest community park, the public can now view the Taylor Ice Truck up close and experience a piece of community history free of charge. In addition to the truck’s stationary display, the Taylor Ice Truck serves as a mobile ambassador for the museum for use in parades and select off-site exhibits, including past display at the South Shore Convention and Visitor Authority’s Indiana Welcome Center in Hammond.

To learn more about the Museum at Lassen’s Resort and their mission, visit lassensresort.org.

The Museum at Lassen’s Resort. Courtesy Cedar Lake Historical Association.