Forgotten Brewery Caves - A quick visit to Bloomington Illinois

A while back I wrote about a Forgotten Brewery Cave in Bloomington Illinois.  I opined that a keen eyed observer might well find traces of it.  On a recent road trip I noted that we were passing within a few miles of the site and decided to test this theory.

A few basics.  The location is in Forrest Park, which seems to have had the second r added in recent years.  Prior to that it had been called Stein's Grove or Stein's park after one of the owners of the brewery there.  The cave was known to still be intact in 1947.  In fact I was able to show a few low resolution newspaper photos one of which showed the caretaker E.R. Burnett giving a tour to a couple of anxious appearing children.  As part of my follow up research I discovered high resolution versions of a series of pictures taken this day.  They appear courtesy of the McLean County Museum of History:

The kids by the way are listed as Carol Tudor and Ron Stutzman.  The guy with the lantern is E.R. Burnett.

I was also able to pick up a few more tidbits of information.  The caves - actually brick lined tunnels - were said to be 200 feet long.  And the creek running through the park was called, logically, Brewery Creek.  An old bridge going across it is no longer in use, but is said to have once been the site of a road running through the park.

So....what is there to see in 2022?

OK, I'm going to say something obvious here.  Just because the tunnels probably still exist under Forest Park does not mean you should take a shovel and start digging.  This style of "cave" is not stable.  So the nice people in uniform who will come to have a word with you, and they would do so very quickly, would be doing you a favor.  Have a look but leave this cave alone!

My usual starting point is Google Earth, but it does not show elevation well.  There was no good location near Brewery Creek although I did notice a lot of old bricks laying around, likely the remains of the brewery.  But if you go to a somewhat higher point of the park......

Pretty clear evidence of a sink hole with bits of exposed brickwork.  One of several in fact.  I'm guessing that the sealing of the caves mentioned in local sources consisted of a front loader bashing in the arch seen in the last photo and dumping a bunch of dirt on top.  The tunnel extends some distance out into the center of the park.  I think I see a small depression corresponding to one of the vent holes.  Clearly the structure has not collapsed as that would leave a big trench.  And filling something like this from back to front would be ridiculously difficult.

I really wanted to learn more about E.R. Burnett.  He looks to be around 70 in the 1947 picture.  My best candidate is a fellow named Ellis Retis Burnett who is buried in a local cemetery.  With dates listed as 1893-1956 he'd only be 54 years old in these photos.  But he may have had a hard life.  So far I've found little else.  He probably was in the Navy in World War One.  If my ID is correct he was married to a woman named Odessa and did have children of his own.