The town of Fraser quietly filed for a trademark this month on its long-standing “Icebox of the Nation” moniker, hoping to take back the ignominious – and apparently abandoned – title from International Falls, Minn.
The towns had reached a good-natured détente in the cold war in 1986 when Fraser abdicated its “official” claim as the coldest spot in the country in exchange for $2,000 from International Falls.
But now, just a few months after a proposal to ditch the icebox title entirely met heated community opposition, Fraser officials are insisting that International Falls has let the trademark registration lapse and claimed it for themselves.
“No, no, no!” said International Falls Mayor Shawn Mason. “The city owns the trademark. The council just renewed it a few months ago.”
Records with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office don’t indicate any renewal application, however. International Falls officials, who could produce only a state trademark certificate from December, have planned an emergency meeting today – a federal holiday – to look further into the matter.
“We beat them once, and I’m sure we can beat them again,” said town administrator Rod Otterness.
Fraser town manager Jeff Durbin believes that the Grand County town has a stronger claim, having documented the use of the icebox title since 1956. That is some 24 years earlier than International Falls, officials say.
“The most important piece, in terms of whether or not you can get the trademark, is who started using the trademark first,” he said. “We are really pleased as punch to be moving forward.”
Just last summer, a small group of real estate developers and business leaders in Fraser proposed dropping the nickname altogether because they feared it undermined marketing efforts. But that idea was overwhelmingly opposed by local residents, who consider the valley’s frigid temperatures a badge of honor.
“It was pretty loud and clear that the vast majority of the community said: ‘Hold on. This is reflective of who we are,'” Durbin said.
Even after ceding the icebox title in 1986, Fraser has continued to use it informally. The moniker adorns the town’s welcome signs and was included in the new town logo designed last autumn.
Fraser, which boasts an average annual temperature of 34.8 degrees and periodically hits lows of minus-40 in the winter, sits in a mountain valley where particularly cold air settles.
U.S. 40 through town was named Zerex Avenue after the company that makes the antifreeze gave residents a free supply one winter; Goodyear once equipped every vehicle in town with studded snow tires.
Other towns have contested the “icebox” claim to fame, however, including Big Piney, Wyo., and International Falls, a frigid outpost on the Canadian border that routinely posts the nation’s coldest temperatures.
Like in Fraser, though, some people in International Falls have pushed to broaden its appeal to outsiders by dropping the icebox label.
“They don’t use it anymore,” Durbin said. “If you go to their website, you don’t find any reference to it. The only thing I saw mentioned was Icebox Days.”
Actually, the International Falls Chamber of Commerce just changed the name of its annual winter festival – held this past weekend – to “Blast on the Border,” much to the consternation of many old-timers.
“I, for one, have always enjoyed boasting about living in the ‘icebox of the nation,”‘ one resident using the nom de plume “Icesickle” wrote in a reader forum of the International Falls Daily Journal. The writer added a poem that saluted the town’s notorious winter “with its January snow, blowing winds and temps below.”
Chamber executive director Kallie Briggs said the name change was intended to renew interest in the flagging event and to promote the community’s year-round appeal.
“Even though we changed the name of our winter fest, we’re still very proud of the title,” she said. “It put us on the map. That’s who we are. I think if the city of International Falls were to lose that trademark, the citizens would be up in arms.”
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com.
