Like so many stories of the history of tea, the development of iced tea is tinged with no small amount of myth.

CHILLING AT THE ST. LOUIS WORLD’S FAIR
The most popular story begins in the sweltering heat that hovered over the 1904 St. Louis Exposition where lines at the ice cream booth were legion and customers at the Ceylon and Indian Tea Pavilion were practically non-existent. The British vendor who operated the tea pavilion, Richard Blechynden, recognized that what drove the crowd to the ice cream vendor was the chilling bite of iciness. Willing to adapt to the demands of the market, he plopped some ice into the cups of hot tea, and an American institution was born.

SOUTHERN ORIGINS FOR ICED TEA
The more likely truth is that Blechynden enhanced an already existing idea.  Southerners, who endured their typical heat and humidity with slow intent, drank their tea cool (not necessarily iced) and had done so as far back as the mid to late 1800s. Because electric refrigerators were yet to be invented, and iceboxes were sometimes large civic buildings, or smaller clumsy appliances available only to the affluent, ice was a costly premium in the 19^th century, sometimes more than tea! In the Sept. 28, 1890 issue of the Nevada Noticer, a reporter recapped that year’s Missouri State Reunion of Ex-Confederate Veterans, whose roots were surely “southern.” The article noted the provisions enlisted for the Camp Jackson gathering: “There were 4,800 pounds of bread, 11,705 pounds of beef, 407 pounds of ham, 21 sheep, 600 pounds of sugar, 6 bushels of beans, 60 gallons of pickles, and a wagonload of potatoes. It was all washed down with 2,220 gallons of coffee and 880 gallons of iced tea."

REFRIGERATION SAVES THE TRADITION
While Blechynden may have his title of iced tea inventor diluted by this information, it can truthfully be told that he no doubt that helped to escalate the popularity of tea served iced. The other element in the popularity of iced tea was the invention, in 1913, of the first commercial electric refrigerator for home use. Prior to that, and certainly until the 1930s, most American homes had some form of an icebox, filled with blocks of ice that were delivered to urban homes just as surely as milk, butter, eggs, and coal. And, those people who could not afford the nickel for ice could still buy what they needed at civic icehouses, a fixture in some eastern states up to the 1950s.

ICED TEA NOW 85% OF THE MARKET IN U.S.
More than one hundred years after the St. Louis World’s Fair, refrigerators and the ice they make, are as common as iced tea, now a year-round beverage that accounts for more than eighty-five percent of all tea sales in the United States .  You can find iced tea on menus of restaurants from McDonald’s to five-star bistros every day of the year. The grocer’s shelf bulges with pre-measured bags of tea perfect for one quart pitchers, some requiring hot water to brew followed by cooling, and other pre-measured bags of tea are designed to be brewed right in the refrigerator, thus eliminating one time-consuming step. Iced tea comes bottled, canned, and granulated to which one can just add cold water in per-glass quantities all to satisfy the increasing thirst for iced tea in the United States.