I've returned several times to the beginnings of my Forgotten Brewery Caves series, the "bear den" cave in Irvine Park, Chippewa Falls. It is an interesting site and is on my frequent walking route. It is also the site of a geocache I placed called "No Beer for the Bears" that explores the connection between the beer storage cave and the bear dens.
Oddly after all these years the question of whether the bears actually lived in the beer cave is still elusive. Well today I hope to put it to rest.
The basics.
The beer storage cave was excavated in the early 1870's by Francis X. Schmidmeyer, the first brewer in Chippewa Falls. He must have had an earlier cave that proved inadequate. It is said that it cost him $1,000 to excavate and blast this cave but this is based on the sketchy recollections of one of his children about 80 years after the fact. When the Schmidmeyer brewery went out of business in the late 1870's the cave supposedly was taken over by Leinenkugels. This would have been back up or overflow storage as "Leinies" had their own cave right behind the brewery. I'm assuming that the advent of refrigeration machinery circa 1890 would have made this cave superfluous.
Irvine Park recalls the name of its original benefactor William Irvine, who in 1906 arranged for the donation of 165 acres of land. Whether the cave was in the original parcel or acquired in the next few years is unclear. But with the establishment of a zoo in 1909 a set of bear caves was built adjacent to and by some accounts, incorporating the beer cave. On the surface this would make sense, bears do like caves.
But I have always been skeptical. This cave has a natural spring that keeps water running across its floor year round. Very good for cooling beer. Less good for living in. And since the bears were the star attraction it would not seem ideal to have a dark cave for them to retreat far into.
Recently I ran across a couple of potentially helpful images. This one purports to date to 1909 but everything has a bit of a finished look to it so I suspect it could be later. Note also the bear looking with interest at the free roving turkey on the left of the photo.
Next photo is a postcard. This makes the reported 1910 date a bit more likely. It probably has a post mark. And it is in the collection of the State Historical Society. They tend to pay attention to this sort of thing.
This shows the cave with no cages in front. There are a couple of benches, on one of which you can faintly see a woman with a light scarf on her head. This would fit with the alternate notion of the cave as a shelter for visitors in bad weather. So which is the view that's true?
If you go back to the first image, I've tried to line up the sidewalk and the cement that marks the front of the cages. Those should be in the same place. Here's approximately the same view today.
I don't think it fits. The sidewalk still curves, heading towards the historical marker. The cave is barely glimpsed behind that cluster of trees. But in the 1909 view there is a substantial projection of rock that I just can't see here. The sidewalk in fact has to veer away from it. So what gives?
Well one theory is that the historic photo has been reversed. This happens sometimes. Flipping it around we see:
This would put the rock projection on the right of the bear cages, i.e. on the opposite side from the cave. I think this is a better match if one accounts for a bit of erosion and soil wash down.
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