Chanute Kansas got its start in the 1850s as four separate but near together communities. Each hoped to get the railroad that was scheduled to come through. The competition was not particularly friendly. Eventually a railroad company official marvelously named Octave Chanute arrived on the scene and suggested that things might go better if they just merged the four towns together. They did. Things did go better. And they named the new town after him.
One of the first businesses in town was a brewery. It was started by two gentlemen named Hartman and Hawkins on the edge of town, overlooking Village Creek. This seems to have been built in 1870.
The enterprise lasted until 1880, being then done in by an ill humored State Prohibition law enacted that year. The buildings vanished but the cave remained and became the source of much local lore.
Here is a recent photo of the cave. It does not look like much today but once it was 20 feet wide, 15 feet tall and extended 50 feet into the hillside. After the brewery went out of business the railroad bought the site and in the late 1880s quarried off the face of the bluff. Today only 15 feet of cave remain.*
Small size notwithstanding this cave appears to have had a remarkable amount of criminality associated with it!
In 1903 it was raided due to "beer parties" being held there, the lack of a brewery not being a problem for evaders of Prohibition.
In 1909 the cave was one place searched for "The Flying Frenchman", a man wanted for murder in a neighboring county.
But mostly the cave became known for being a retreat for hobos, men riding the rails. Probably the proximity of the railroad tracks made it prime real estate for "Weary Willie".
In 1910 Acting Chief of Police T.E. Hall had this to say:
"The bums have a regular rookery there. It is fitted up with implements for cooking and washing, and is stocked with coffee, bread and potatoes."
At any given time there would be from 2 to 12 vagrants in residence, many of whom left detailed graffiti with names like "New York Shorty", "A No. 1." and "The Denver Kid". Perhaps some of this still survives.
The presence of dubious characters no doubt lent credence to a very wild story recorded in 1911 under these headlines:
RAIDED THE HOBOE'S REST
Undersheriff Carwile made four arrests there
EXPECTED TO FIND YEGGMEN MAKING SOUP
This headline uses a couple of phrases less known today, but basically the tale was that a man named Flannery from Oklahoma City - described as a "cocaine fiend", whose wife by the way was a leper - had while deeply under the influence been telling wild and frightening tales. He said that dynamite recently stolen from the cement plant was being cooked down to nitroglycerin by a gang of criminals hiding in the old brewery cave.
A skeptical but dutiful posse of townsfolk marched out to the cave and found four men cooking.....breakfast.
After questioning turned up nothing of interest the hoboes, and Flannery to boot, were given 15 minutes to get out of Chanute.
Pictures of the cave are surprisingly scarce. Below is a shot of an excavated shaft at the back of the cave. Unlike most such features it is four feet across and probably was used both as a vent and to raise and lower kegs from the brewery which sat up above on the bluff.
In the unlikely event you are in Chanute Kansas, the cave is on the north bank of Village Creek, just upstream from the rail road bridge.
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* This looks a great deal like the mysterious stub of a cave to be found near Mirror Lake. Could something similar have happened there?
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