After World War I, the company's ice plants experienced structural problems. In 1919, three of the six rooms at Plant No.1 were leaning, a common problem in the ice industry, and they were torn down. Two of the remaining three rooms were in poor condition. At Plant No. 3, two of the six rooms were blown down in a 1919 windstorm. In 1920, Plant No.1 was rebuilt to its six-room capacity, but No. 3 Plant at Beaupland, with its remaining four rooms and conveyor, was beyond repair, and the plant was closed. During this period, particularly with the War's labor difficulties, tax issues, and his own declining health, Albert Lewis considered selling the ice company. Nathaniel Drake and Arthur L. Stull prevailed on Lewis to retain it.

In the early 1920s, the ice company served forty customers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Jersey City's Drake Company was the largest purchaser, followed by the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Other large purchasers were the Clinton Ice Company in Irvington, New Jersey; the Bound Brook Ice Company in Bound Brook, New Jersey, and E.J. Dorsey and Sons, another wholesaler from Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Local customers included Armour and Company in Hazleton; Home Brewing in Sheppton; Sunnyrest sanatorium in White Haven; the Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton Ice Company in Wilkes-Barre; and Yuengling & Sons, the Pottsville brewery.

After Albert Lewis' death in 1923, the Lewis estate operated the Bear Creek Ice Company on behalf of his three heirs. However, by the early decades of the twentieth century, the natural ice industry lost substantial market share to ice manufacturing plants. In addition, the electric refrigerator was introduced in 1913-14, and would grow in popularity over the next two decades. Mechanical refrigeration techniques developed for cooling railroad cars to haul meat and perishables lessened demand for ice by railroad companies and contributed to the decline of the natural ice industry. The Bear Creek Ice Company only shipped 14,540 tons of ice in the winter of 1924-25 - nearly 50 percent lower than its pre-WWI harvests. The end was near.

A warm 1930-31 season saw the last ice harvest conducted by the Albert Lewis Estate. The company cut ice in early January for rail shipment. This was a limited season, and during the following spring men tore up the railroad track between Bear Creek and Meadow Run. Thereafter, the Lewis Estate would lease the ice rights to Bear Creek Lake.

In late December 1930 the real estate holdings of the Lewis Estate east of the river were formally distributed among Lewis's three heirs: his widow, Lily C. Lewis; son, Hugh R. Lewis; and daughter, Lily Lewis Seneff. Two-thirds of the holdings were in Bear Creek Township. The Lewis heirs would also share in the proceeds from future leasing of the Bear Creek Ice Company.

On November 10, 1931, the Lewis estate sold the ice plants and related business to Burt Bryant, who was also in the ice business at several ponds in the area. Bryant incorporated another Bear Creek Ice Company in December 1931 with D. S. Lauderbaugh and John T. Williams. But the venture with Bryant faltered, and the following December 1932 the business was resold to the Lewis Estate. For several years the business was leased to Lauderbaugh.

Rail service was also coming to an end. The last passenger service on the Bear Creek Branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad ran in early 1930. In the later years a passenger car was merely hooked on to a freight train for the run to Bear Creek. The Lehigh Valley Railroad station at Bear Creek officially closed on June 1, 1932. It was relocated by the railroad on September 15, 1935, and was converted to a private residence.

The 1937-38 harvest at Bear Creek was the last in which the railroad was used to ship ice. During the following spring, the Lehigh Valley Railroad began to remove the tracks of the Bear Creek Branch. The ice rights at Bear Creek were then leased to R. A. Davis, an ice and coal dealer in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. By the mid-1940s, R. A. Davis was the largest natural ice producer in the Eastern United States. The total capacity of his plants at Lake Ganoga, Mountain Springs, Bear Creek, and Gouldsboro exceeded 130,000 tons. He distributed ice to New England, as far south as the Carolinas, and westward to Cleveland.

R.A. Davis continued to cut ice through the World War II era. During the 1944-45 ice season, German prisoners-of-war were billeted at Gouldsboro, and assigned to ice work at Gouldsboro and Bear Creek. Trucks were now used to plow snow off the ice pond. By the 1940s the only plant in operation was the No. I Plant at Bear Creek, and only three rooms on the pond side of the old rail bed were in use. Without a railroad, the R. A. Davis Company used trucks to haul ice to its Wilkes-Barre and Scranton customers.

In the winter of 1947-48, only 9,000 tons of ice were cut at Bear Creek, as artificial refrigeration swept away the natural ice industry. However, the next few winters were quite warm, and the harvests grew worse. Then, on February 14, 1950, ten inches of snow covered the roof of the No. 1 ice plant at Bear Creek, and the roof and front of the building collapsed as strong winds whipped through the area during the night storm. No ice had been cut during the season due to the weather. It was the end of the ice harvest at Bear Creek. The following year, on January 21, 1951, the Sunday Independent announced that the "natural ice business is dead for all practical purposes. It has bowed to the refrigeration age."

In June of 1950, Lily Lewis Seneff, acting for the Lewis Estate and her mother, Lily C. Lewis, sought to sell 2,500 acres of the Bear Creek lands for further development. The task of maintaining the unique village had grown too cumbersome for the family. In 1952, the Bear Creek Realty Company, headed by Robert A. Eyerman, announced the purchase of nearly 3,000 acres of Bear Creek land. Over the next several decades, this company would oversee the sale and development of a considerable portion of the acre for residential purposes.