Forgotten Brewery Caves - Yankton Dakota Territory - Part Two

Sometimes I have enough clues to assemble a brief "Brewery Caves" article from a place too distant for me to do a boots on the ground investigation.  In putting this out into the wilds of the Internet I would yet again remind all that trespassing is bad, and taking risks in exploring is very, very bad. That out of the way it would be marvelous if additional information were to appear.

First a map.  This is again from Yankton, once territorial capital of Dakota, now a sleepy river town on the banks of the Missouri river.

This is an 1883 Sanborn map and atypically it shows the underground storage cellar extending back from the brewery.  

The location is simply given as 3/4 of a mile NW of Post Office.  At this time in history it was just assumed that this would be a sure fire landmark!

Note that the dotted lines extending back into a presumed hill are running west.  Yankton sits generally on very flat ground.  The exceptions are the bluffs due west of town and also this site, which would have to be on the west side of Marne Creek. At the time when John Foerster set up shop it was actually called Rhine Creek.  (A bit of unpopularity of Germany in WW I caused the name change!).

The dates on this enterprise are a little sketchy.  John seems to have run the brewery from circa 1870 to 1882.  His wife Eliza became proprietor then as John had died in a "buggy accident". Mrs. Foerster ran it until 1890 at which point it became vacant for a while.  The imprudent solons of the new state of South Dakota took it upon themselves to enact Prohibition as one of their first official duties, and both of Yankton's breweries are shown as "closed" on 1891 Sanborn maps. In 1899 the Eureka Brewing Company reoccupied the buildings but only until 1904. The beer cellars seem to have been kept up, and even improved upon per this 1898 image. 

Alas, I cannot hold out hope for a discovery of the interesting cellars shown on these  maps.  The location of the Foerster Brewery is on Locust Street and West 9th Street.  It is now the site of Lincoln Elementary School and I'm sure that the nice hillside behind it has been made entirely immune to the exploring efforts of any inquisitive grade schoolers!

As a minor footnote I'd point out that the area previously designated as barley storage is labeled on the later map as BEER BOTTLING.  Indeed, the Eureka Brewing Company put their wares up in bottles, and embossed ones at that.

Eureka was and is a very small community about 300 miles north of Yankton.  The unusual business arrangement here seems to have been a way that Eureka - a major grain growing community - could market some of their produce directly to the idled brewery which one imagines was purchased or leased very reasonably given the uncertainty of South Dakota Prohibition efforts.

Here's Part One of the Yankton Brewery Story