Forgotten Brewery Caves - Mayville Wisconsin. Part One.

Mayville is a tidy little town in southeastern Wisconsin.  It remarkably had three, or perhaps even four, 19th century breweries and we'll be looking in on all of them.   Clearly a productive place to visit for a fan of Forgotten Brewery Caves, so as they say in Vegas "I'll be here all week".

We'll start with a relatively new one.  William Darge was a carpenter who built his own brewery on the banks of the Rock River just across from downtown Mayville.  He's known to have been brewing in 1866 but could have been in business a year or two earlier.  He did well, and by the late 1870's his was largest brewery in town, albeit with only a modest output of 428 barrels.  

The brewery of course was made of wood, and unsurprisingly had problems with fire, that bane of the early brewing industry.  When it burned in 1879 the news made the papers as far away as Madison.  It was noted that it "was burned several years ago, and insurance rebuilt it, but this time it burned just the day before the insurance agent arrived from Fond du Lac".  

That bit of bad luck aside the establishment was rebuilt again, this time in brick.  

But misfortunes continued.  William Darge died in 1885.  His son Louis took it over but died in turn only two years later.  William's widow sold it to a man named Gerlach who "converted it to other uses".  In a pattern that will confuse things a bit in a later post, Gerlach was one of those individuals who had a stake in one of the other breweries but "dabbled" a bit in speculation.

Here's a couple of outside views of the brewery in 2021.

And for comparison here is a view from a rather beat up 1876 map.

In my photos there is something you can't see clearly.  Emphatic no trespassing signs, one of which has a picture of a pistol on it.  Not an ideal situation to go knocking on doors, and visiting on a weekday I did not have the good fortune to come across the denizens of the place happily out doing yardwork.  Interestingly the place had been for sale, and I understand an offer was placed just days before.  As such there were several interior photos up on "Zillo" that I pass along as they would seem to be in the public domain.

Substantial cellars below.  

One chamber is full of water and supposedly is a fish pond complete with a dock!

From what I can see the Darge brewery has survived nicely.  I think the new owners will be happy there.