One occasionally sees, cut into the side of a hill or lying flat next to a home's foundation, a door in that ground that leads to a drab, potato-colored wonderland of vegetable storage: a root cellar.

Minnie Geiger remembers the time when it was necessary to have a root cellar. “I watch these young girls now go to the store. We didn’t have to go to town,” she said. “It’d be a cold day in hell when ...