Paramount Iceland

History:

Until unified as the City of Paramount in 1948, the area was known as Hynes and Clearwater, two neighboring communities. Because of a Union Pacific rail station in Hynes, it became an important shipping center in the 1930's. The Hynes hay market became a world leader and the largest receiving point for hay in the world. The dairy business flourished in the area as many Dutch families emigrated to Hynes-Clearwater and the neighboring towns of Artesia and Bellflower shortly after World War I. When Iceland was built, it had a strong following from the Dutch community with their skating backgrounds and the speed skating club they formed in the early 1940's at Iceland, the Demorra Club, produced many champions.

Frank and his brother, Lawrence Zamboni, had an ice manufacturing plant in Hynes in the 1930's but with the advent of refrigerators, they decided to build an ice skating rink to replace the potential loss in their ice business. Frank's inventiveness became evident when he started experimenting with a refrigerated ice floor very different from the normal type composed of a grid work of steel piping beneath the ice. Frank's idea was to create a flatter and smoother ice sheet by circulating the salt brine in large flat tanks covering the entire area of the ice floor. The tanks would be only one-half inch thick and a series of them would extend from one side of the rink to the other, all tied together with large pipes serving as manifolds. Frank built a test floor next to the Zamboni Bros. ice plant and because it proved successful, he and Lawrence, with their cousin Pete Zamboni, built Iceland in 1939 using Frank's concept. Frank obtained a patent on his unique idea in 1944. (U. S. patent No. 2,411,919). Iceland became well known for the level quality of its ice surf " type="text/javascript"> ace because Frank had eliminated the rippling that often occurred with pipe floors. The steel tank ice floor served Iceland well until it was replaced by a conventional plastic pipe grid in 1977.