A dataset of lake ice cover records (did the lake freeze or not, date of freeze (ice_on) and date of thaw (ice_off)) for 18 lakes with time series from the 1810s-2017+, with data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the data portal from the Long-term Ecological Research Network (Benson et al., 2000; Sharma et al., 2019). For each lake, we also include the GPS coordinates.