Lansing Bicentennial MinuteNearly every winter Cayuga Lake is frozen over at both ends. Before our present method of making ice thousands of tons of it would be shipped to New York and other places each winter. Cutting ice was the big money maker during the winter months. The lake seldom freezes all the way of its length, but in 1963 thousands of ducks were caught in the ice. Students skated on the ice in 1904 and teams were driven across it in 1885. During the 1912 freeze up a total of six people skated the length of the lake from Ithaca to Cayuga - single file and many feet apart so that only one person would be on thin ice at any given time.