On my recent visit to the Bloomer Brewery building I heard a few stories of the place. For some reason there are plenty of 'em. Perhaps it makes sense. This is the sort of small town where people remember things, and the physical survival of the place encourages that.
It's early days were pretty much the usual tale of fires, ownership changes and so forth. It's when Prohibition came along that things got interesting.
Jacob Breunig bought the brewery in 1915. Four years later alcohol became illegal. That did not seem to deter him, and the tales of Prohibition era moonshine are backed up by a raid by the "Revenuers" in 1928. Bruenig sold the brewery to an A.L. Lipschulz of Saint Paul. This was probably in 1934; the architectural drawings we saw last time are associated with the sale. The new name "Bloomer Beverage Company" dates to this time.
After a few years he sold out to a man named Tankenoff. Oddly the product line trended towards ales instead of lagers. In this era their products were often named "Al's"after Mr. Lipschulz.
Business was so-so. This was not the sort of drink most rural Wisconsinites favored, and I've heard there was lingering resentment on the part of local authorities after the whole moonshining thing. To be fair I've also heard that the Chippewa County sheriff of that era turned a blind eye to this sort of thing.
It was the US Army contract that kept the business going. Shipping their ale, now rebranded as Buckingham Ale, to the UK was good business.
After the war the brewery closed. And the building was used for many things. Storage, but that's boring. How about a worm farm?
People like to fish in these parts. Fish like worms. Worms like a nice cool basement. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the place had rats. Solution? Rat poison. New problem? Rats defecating on the worm beds left traces of poison that killed all the nightcrawlers.
OK, how about a fish farm? The accounts I've heard vary a bit. Sometimes the rats re-enter the story. But the more detailed version is that they were trying to raise some sort of trout. These are a finicky thing to aquaculture, and if someone forgets to turn on the circulating pump one day.......
At various times parts of the sprawling complex seem to have been vacant. Our discussion at the bar turned to the issues of homelessness, and I was told that one time there was a guy living somewhere in the place. He started a fire and died. The fire department put out the smoldering fire and tossed his body rather unceremoniously onto a snow drift.
My revisit to look for the caves was prompted by a bar patron partly falling into a hole where one of the cave's vents finally washed down whatever it was filled with in the 1920's or so. And as it happens, falling into things is a theme here. One time when a guy renting out some space drove his truck in, a wheel sunk deeply into the ground. They had found the original well from the brewery.
Delightfully it was excavated, cleaned up, and a new top put on it. The above ground stonework in this picture is new, as of course is the sensible grate on the top. The well goes down a long, long way.
The cheerful guy on the left has been associated with the building for a half century or more. He still does maintenance, and had lots of tales of what state the place was in when he arrived on the scene in the early 1970's. When the well was found they got a guy with climbing equipment to come over from the local creamery. I guess tanks and chimneys there needed cleaning. My bar pal put on the harness, lowered himself way down there and called to the people up top to take a look. He'd gotten a box of iron pyrite - aka fools gold - and scattered it around. Obviously there was brief but intense excitement.
I do hope he was wearing that green plaid shirt and hat, and that it was Saint Patrick's Day....
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