A Few More Tales of the Bloomer Brewery

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....

Forgotten Brewery Caves - The Bloomer Mystery Deepens....

I like historical mysteries.  Sometimes the lead me on a merry chase.  Such is the case with the cave associated with the Bloomer Brewery.  My first two posts on this are worth a read to get context.  Oh, TLDR?  Well here's the basic dates and data.  BLOOMER PART I.   and BLOOMER PART II.

1872 brewery established.  Presumably a lagering cave was created at that time.

1880's two fires damage or perhaps destroy the original brewery.  First of several rebuilds and additions begin.

1934 - We have a nice architectural drawing of the place.  New data!

1964 - a survey by the Department of Defense is taken of underground spaces in America.  Places where citizens might ride out a nuclear apocalpyse.  The caves of the Bloomer Brewery were rated for over 500 people!

mid 1970's.  My friends at the bar start working at the place.  

Just recently the cave area was showcased with nice new woodwork and framing.  I wish more caves were given this respect.

About those new friends.  I'd made arrangements to revisit the site after new owners bashed a hole in the wall exposing a cave I'd suspected was there but now, yes NOW I would get all the answers.  One of the folks I had lunch with had actually fallen into a hole out back of the building, tipping them off to an underground space!  That's what prompted them to have at the back wall of the known - but rather tiny - caves for a look see.  The hole is visible in the above photo.  Let's take a peek.

First, here's a look at the back wall today.

A ladder was helpfully obtained.  Looking at the newly created hole we can see that it went through some newer, definitely 20th century, materials that had been plastered over.  I'm thinking 1920s.

And what lies beyond?

Huh.  There's only about another 15 feet of cave back there.  With of course a vent hole that is just the right size to put a leg down into.  Glad nobody got hurt.  I see no plausible side passages.  The black material might be tar adhesive for cork, but given the state of disrepair is more likely nasty fungus stuff.

So how to put this all together?

Please consider this nothing more than educated speculation.  But I have had a chance to examine the brewery caves of enterprises large and small, old and new, successful and....otherwise.

I think what we are seeing here is the original 1870's lagering cave.  It's not big, but just maybe big enough.  The brewery put up around 500 barrels of beer in 1875, and if we assume it was not all in one batch you could almost manage it with this space.  Or a bit more, but we'll get to that part.  There have always been features of this cave that did not make sense.  For instance the rather formidable "ante chamber".  For a simple cave that lead into the nice convenient space of the brewery basement this engineering is rather over the top.

I wonder if this was actually a cave adjacent to the original brewery?  Fires in 1882 and 1883 did a lot of damage.  After the second fire the brewery was rebuilt on a larger scale.  Honestly this complex of buildings and additions is quite the architectural mess.

Let's tidy things up a bit.  Here's what the brewery looked like in 1915.

The cave we've been looking at is, of course, straight back from those big double doors.  The massive barn like structure on the left is certainly the 1880's rebuild.  Or part of it.  Now, in 1934 there was a detailed architectural study made of the structure.  

You can see the big wing off to the left.  That's the 1880's "barn" area.  Now full of ageing vats.  They would have had mechanical refrigeration by then.  You can also see up at the top, the little extension that is the two chambers of the "caves".  You do NOT see the space beyond the wall, so that was sealed off by the 1930's.  You also do not see any other caves coming off what looks like solid back walls.  But if they ignored one sealed off archway it is reasonable to assume they could ignore others.

The area to consider carefully is in that 1880's addition.  It was not open for a look on this visit, but last time I was there here's the back wall of it.

Drywall.  Or maybe just mostly dry.  This was installed during the memory of my friends up at the bar.  They spoke admiringly of the massive construction of the wall hidden behind it.  And told me that water seeping through was a big enough issue that they had to install drain pipes back there to divert it.  Oh, and it seemed to be particularly bad around some odd places that looked like sealed off doorways.....

Until some day when the moisture finally wins and the drywall is replaced, I'll just keep assuming that there are additional storage caves back there.  The output of the brewery in the 1880's was presumably more than the original cave could handle, and I deem it unlikely that they'd have gone early for the mechanical refrigeration.  It was not a successful enough operation to be an early adopter of expensive new technology.

That leaves one additional mystery.  How would you fit 500 plus nuclear refugees into this place?  Per the 1934 drawing there was no way they could have shown whoever came around for a look any caves that would come close.  So it must have been the basement space in my last photo.  And while this is cheating a bit I want to be fair.  The ceiling of this was supporting huge brew kettles and other heavy things.  It is supported by beams and girders, and has a ridiculous composition of thick layers of wood and three or four inches of honest to goodness concrete.  It would be a plausible fallout shelter despite having its front section be above ground.  A number of civil defense signs found in this area would seem to back this theory up.

Maybe when the inspector came around in the early 1960's he looked at the actual cave, shook his head sadly....and then got into a friendly discussion with the locals over a couple of beers.  "Ah, heck.  Close enough for Government work!"

I would be remiss if I did not mention that the Old Bloomer Brewery Bar and Grill  served up a great burger and fries, and although I was - due to other commitments - not able to enjoy a beer or two, that should not stop any of you from doing so!

A Forgotten Brewery Cave - Remembered.....and Now Sealed.

Leinenkugel's brewery.  No, not the one in Chippewa Falls.  The family had lots of branches.  This establishment was run by Henry Leinenkugel and was on the banks of Half Moon Lake in Eau Claire.

A brief history of the brewery.

Like the Jacob Leinenkugel brewery up in Chippewa Falls, this one started in 1867.  It was actually run by Henry Sr. and his son, Henry Jr.  It got off to a good start, and for a time was the top producing brewery in Eau Claire.  But in 1876 Henry Jr. died, and as his father had by that point retired, the enterprise was taken over by Caroline, wife of the Departed.  Things got difficult.  Their production dropped in half, and their credit ratings were not positive.

A partnership of Frase and Lissack bought the brewery and did their best for a couple of years, but also failed.  The next owners were Carstens and Hartwig, who with additional partners ran the place until it burned down in July of 1885.  It was never rebuilt.

The newpaper article that described the fire mentions that the beer in the underground vaults was preserved.  So lets visit these "vaults".  Or actually, revisit them, as this is one of the brewery caves I have previously shown but not given a location.

While not generally known, the location did attract the usual unwelcome visitors.....

That picture was from a later visit.  The first time I crawled in it looked like a bit more of a cozy hangout for neighbors.

Yes, crawled in.  The entrance had been sealed at least twice in the past.  

Here's what the entrance looked like until recently.

Summer of 2025.

I can actually trace the history of the cave since 1885 in some detail.  I've seen a photo circa 1900 that shows the remnants of what would have been the original entrance.  It was of course a straight run out, so that beer could be hauled out and ice hauled in.  This was about the time period in which the local paper describes it as being a hideout for local delinquents who were stealing things from cabins around the lake.  

In the 20th century it was used for a time by Silver Springs, a company now known for various mustard and horseradish products, but back then they had a larger line of veggies, some of which required cold storage.  The nice cement floors and the remnants of an electrical system must date to this era.

Times more recent have been troubled.  Eau Claire has a significant problem with homelessness.  And brewery caves naturally attract people with nowhere else to be.  Both this cave and "The Cave of the Mad Poetess" have had semi permanent residents in recent years.  There have been issues.  Danger of people being hurt.  I've heard there was a sexual assault.  It's worth noting that this cave is adjacent to a public park/beach.

So the "other" Leinenkugel cave has been sealed off.  Its the right call.  Everything is still down there and now preserved, perhaps for some happy day when history is appreciated more and the troubles of the world are fewer.

After I took the last photo, Hank and I walked past the beach.  It was about 9am and a homeless guy was sleeping on the ground next to the beach house.

Forgotten Brewery Caves - Underneath Madison Wisconsin

Brewery caves in large cities are not as interesting as those from smaller places.  In part because so few of them are accessible.  In a place where reckless visitors abound, caves were sealed up early and effectively.  But that does not mean they are not down there...

Consider Madison Wisconsin.  Founded in 1838 it became the capital of when the Badger State attained statehood a decade later.  And of course, legislating is a thirsty business.  Breweries started being built in 1848, but the two under discussion today were just a bit later.

The Capital Brewery was established by a Wm Voight in 1854.  Joseph Hausman bought it in '64.  It was located at State and Gilman.

A rather short distance away was a brewery started by Barnhard Mauz, or Mautz in 1865.  This was at State and Gilman and went through the usual ownership changes, ending up being owned by a guy named Hess.  Hausman bought out Hess in 1883, giving him two breweries about a block apart from each other.  Now, on to the issue of brewery caves.

There is an odd article in The Capital Times in 1923.  In part:

It is of course mixing up the functions of a brewery and a distillery, but hey it was Prohibition and they were getting nostalgic.  It goes on:

There are few contemporary references to brewery caves in Madison.  The city is built on an isthmus between two lakes, so it would be a place where ice houses would be practical.  And while I don't know the geology of the place I can report that it is pretty flat, none of the nice handy sandstone cliffs you have in other parts of the state.  Oddly one of the few references I have seen comes from right here in Chippewa Falls, where an early visitor to the Leinenkugel's brewery cave compared it favorably to that from the Rodermund brewery of Madison.  This was a different place, along the lake shore on Lodi Road.  Where their "vaults" were is a mystery, but they are also mentioned in news articles regards a bankruptcy sale in 1875.*

So returning to State Street,  lets take a look.  Chronologically of course.

State Street in 1867.  Mautz marked with red arrow and Hausmann with blue.

These early Bird's Eye views tend to be a bit idealized.  Here's a more realistic 1885 look:

Both establishments look to have grown, with Hausman in particular now occupying most of its block.  For even more detail, an 1885 Sanborn map:

Notice that the Mautz brewery is now gone, replaced by a stable/livery run by its last owner, a Mr. Hess.  Often the Bird's Eye views are a bit out of date.

So, are there indeed deep tunnels zig zagging about under State Street, linking these now vanished brewery sites?  Maybe.  If there is bed rock on the site and proper tunnels they are almost impossible to collapse.  Especially if you don't want to also collapse the buildings and streets above!  In many cities there are "Urban Explorers" who post camouflaged accounts of their underground adventures.  I've seen nothing relating to these tunnels in such fora.

So perhaps we'll never know.  Here's the site today, standing in front of the former Mautz brewery, looking down State Street past Hausmann's, and with the State Capitol in the far distance....

I have a certain ability to "sense" things underground, but it doesn't work from a Google Earth image.

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* The lake front has been heavily modified since the 19th century.  My guess is that Roderman's beer vaults were probably near, or under, the bridge where Johnson street crosses the Yahara river.  

Brewery Detective - Augusta Wisconsin. (Plus a Very Forgotten Brewery Cave?)

My efforts to help The Homesteaders build this summer has taken me through Augusta Wisconsin on a regular basis.  It's a pretty old community for a place that was not on early water transportation routes.  Among the bits of history that I have rattling around in my head is this: there was an early brewery there.  But nobody seems to know much about it.  Time for some detective work.

Doug Hoverson's magnum opus "The Drink that Made Wisconsin Famous" gives a few basics.  

The brewery was known as Kaspar Neher and Co., and was in business roughly from 1870 - 1878.  It first shows up in government records in 1870, when they produced a paltry 100 barrels of beer.  They never seem to have topped 180 barrels.  So it was a small time operation.

Various other names are associated with the venture.  In 1870 Neher and "his neighbor Nicholas Mergener" were listed as the proprietors.  Later a Jacob Haskett was involved.  I also found one mention of an "R. Wegener" being involved.  This is probably the same name as Mergener, but neither has been easy to locate.  In any event the brewery fell on hard times and in 1876 was reported as being mortgaged.  An article in an Eau Claire paper from 1878 indicates it was by then out of business.

Neher went on to have a stake in the F.X. Schmidmeyer brewery in Chippewa Falls, yet another twist in that very complex ownership story......

Only a few other facts are certain.  There is, or was, a Brewery Hill in Augusta.  That would seem a near certain location for the enterprise.  As to location of this, well, its hard to say.  A history of early Augusta mentions that one of the first homes in the community was built by Erastus Bills and his son S.E. Bills, near "..what is now known as Brewery Hill."  They would have been there circa 1857, long before the brewery.   The article mentioning this was from 1906, so the name Brewery Hill persisted quite a while before being lost.

So where was this mysterious brewery?  In general early breweries would be located along a creek or near a nice spring.  A hill side is almost a necessity, as a lagering cave would be needed.  You also needed road access to bring in grain and to haul out heavy barrels.  And if possible,  set up shop just outside the city limits so you could sell a little beer outside of city ordinance saloon hours.

We have our work cut out for us on this one.  Warning...between assorted German spellings, transcription and OCR glitches, it will be heavy lifting.

There is an 1878 map of Eau Claire County that shows the Augusta area in considerable detail.  Starting with the known names I did find a couple of places of interest.  Like this one:

Lets call this site one.  Just west of town.  We have E.S. Bills owning property along a creek.  A J.M. Hackett is next door.  Not Haskett but close.  But there is a problem.....I can't see a hill anywhere near.  Sometimes hills do go away when railroads barge through.

Further out east of town a ways there are two more properties owned by various someones named Bills.  We have a J. Bills, and an Ira Bills.  no doubt relatives.  Could one of them be on the "old homestead"?  There was after all a 20 year gap in time between the original settlement and this map.  And just a bit further down the road there is a gently rising hill and this....

Property owned by someone named Meher.  A typo for Neher?  Lets call this site two.  

Finally, south of town but not on a creek or near any apparent hill, is another lot labeled E.S. Bills.   It is an open field now, not much chance of surviving brewery remains anywhere near.  I'm going to rule this one out.  It just looks like second tier real estate, and as the main significance of the Bills homestead is proximity to a hill it does not look promising.

A bit more digging came up with the following.   The Neher involved was actually named Melchior Kasper Neher.  He was born in Germany in 1838.  His father Johannes, or John,  emigrated to Eau Claire in 1862 and ran a distillery starting in 1864.  When it burned down Melchior started his new venture, a brewery on the north side.  He sold this to a man named Hunner in 1868.  I suspect he moved to Augusta about this time.

This should make the second potential site, that with a J. Meher property, the likely location of the Augusta brewery.  Johannes Neher Senior was dead by then, but Melchior had brothers named Johannes Jr.,  Joseph and John!  Any would make sense to hold the property title in this fiscally unstable enterprise.  And there is something of a hill on the site, but no creek.    Here's a look out across the fields towards the Neher/Meher property:

Not much to see.  That little tuft of scrubby stuff in the middle probably used to be "something", but more than likely just an old windmill or some such.  A bit closer in but still on what I'm starting to think of as Brewery Hill there is this:

Nice, and just the sort of structure you'd expect for an 1870's small brewery, but I'd put this on the "J.F. Hall" property and suspect it means little beyond that there was habitation on the hill, such as it is, at the right time.  By the way, Augusta has a large Amish community who still build in old fashioned configurations.  I saw several area structures that "look" 1870's but were probably less than 20 years old.

Ah, but regular students of brewery history will ask "where's the cave?".  Years ago I read, in a source I can no longer locate, that there was a brick structure along the creek in "downtown" Augusta that had once been used for beer storage.  My brief search then was not productive.  But going back a second time I had more information to work with.  Firstly, that this made sense.  You need to store lager for months in a cool, protected space.  Ideally a hard rock cave going way back into a hill.  No such geology is present within a few miles of Augusta.  You could cheat a bit and use ice in a less ideal cave, but getting enough of that would be difficult at any of the three sites I considered for the brewery.  On the other hand.....

If you go back to the first map you can see that Bridge Creek was once dammed up, leaving a nice mill pond upstream.  The supposed cave site was just downstream from that, where Stone Street crosses the creek.   So I went back for another look.  There  is "something" there.

A roughly arch shaped structure.  The front wall looks pretty well made.

Maybe the cave for the elusive Augusta brewery.  I'd be a bit happier with the ID if the flat ground behind this structure showed any evidence of vent holes or a cave in.  Still, I'd say the odds of this being a very well filled in 1870's brewery cave are better than even.

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Addendum:  Melchior Kaspar Neher moved on after his time in Augusta.  In 1876 he took over the struggling F.X. Schmidmeyer brewery in Chippewa Falls in partnership with a man named Huber.  Although production was increased the venture was not a success and it went under by the end of 1879.  He next turns up in Crete Nebraska as a participant and later owner of the Western Brewery in that town.  He also ran a billiards hall, a restaurant, and had a sort of picnic and party area out of town called Neher's Grove.   From the available records it sounds as if his involvement in Crete began in 1875.  How was he involved in three different breweries at the same time?  His final venture in Nebraska seems to have done reasonably well.  But through the 1880's he was in declining health, eventually moving to Albuquerque New Mexico where one of his sons ran "Neher's Opera House".  He died there in August of 1890. 

And no, I can't explain the difference between obituary in the newspaper and date marked on the tombstone.  The latter would seem more likely to be in error.  Melchior was an enigma to the very end.

 

Yellowstone Bill

Well here he is, Yellowstone Bill.  And for good measure, the Famous East Side Cave where he resided for a while in the 1890's.  These are from a lengthy article in the Minneapolis papers from 1897.

I'm really not sure how much of the details of his life to believe, but here we go....

His real name was Martin Frank Walker.  He is described as youthful looking - despite being 58 years old - with a magnificent mustache and with dark hair flowing out from under a broad brimmed dark slouch hat.  He was born in Titusville, PA in 1839.  He left home "at an early age" and meandered about Wisconsin and Iowa for a time.  Eventually his family moved to Austin, Minnesota.  This could not have been before the mid 1850s.  But he did not stick around long, and after making a living giving horse breaking lessons for a dollar a pop he joined the Cadwell & Van Arnburg Circus for four years, working as an acrobat.  

He had to leave that career after fighting a duel with a fellow performer and, being the first one able to get out of the hospital decided to put some distance behind him.  It was now the early 1860's and he claims to have been a hunter and trapper in various far Western states, and to have been a scout under General Reno.  His fanciful tales of fighting Indians, while no doubt the hair raising stuff he told visitors to his cave home, are beyond plausible.

He left this life in 1877, returning to Austin, Minnesota briefly before traveling - reasons unspecified - through Asia and Europe.  He came to Minneapolis sometime thereafter, living on a houseboat.  By one account he decided to take it over St. Anthony Falls as a stunt, being later charged with animal cruelty when his dog drowned.  Another consequence was that his son was taken away from him it being considered that he was .."too wild a character"... to have charge of the boy.

Bill occupied the Famous East Side Cave intermittently, evidently for 12 full months on one occasion.  He is known to have lived there in 1893 when he was fined after his dog bit somebody.  He had it set up as a sort of museum/souvenir shop.  A few brief excerpts from the 1897 article should suffice to give the flavor of it.

"What first catches the eye in this big vault is the skin of a giant silver-tip grizzly, one of the finest skins of its kind in Minneapolis.  No mansion in the twin cities possesses a fur rug which could compare to it..."

"The collection of minerals, petrified woods, etc is very large and of considerable value.  There are a number of fine Bad Lands shells, petrified fish enameled, closely resembling mother of pearl and found in moss rocks......There are cave crystals and formations of rock of great beauty....a petrified piece of a mastodon's jaw....and what Walker says is the only petrified sea-snake's head ever found....and portions of a petrified turtle.  Walker says this turtle weighed a ton.  The Times reporter could not dispute the assertion."

Walker lived in the cave with his wife.  His two favorite horses also lived in there with them.  Here's one of them.

It is impossible to say how much this was played tongue in cheek.

Evidently in the late 1890's Yellowstone Bill left Minneapolis for parts uncertain.  In 1908 his son put an appeal in the paper looking for help finding a father he'd not seen in 17 years.  (This would seem to put the houseboat incident in 1891.  There was a partial reply suggesting that Bill had last been heard from in 1899 at which point he was in Northern Missouri and, very appropriately, engaged in the sale of hair remedies!*

I've tried to search online sources for more details, especially for an obituary.  So far without luck.

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* The houseboat incident seems a bit sketchy.  I did find reference to him living on a boat in April 1891.  It had been burglarized.  The location is given as being near the Bohemian Flats, which is basically right across the river from his later cave habitation.  So....did he bring the boat up through the locks to run it over The Falls?

The East Side Cave (Minneapolis) Revisited

Brewery cave posts have been scarce in recent years.  Honestly I think I've had a look at all that are to be found in a reasonable travel radius and without a degree of risk and trespass that I won't take.

But there are always new things to learn.  And in fact....I think I've been too hasty with my conclusions on a brewery cave in Minneapolis.  Here's what I wrote back in 2019....

A False Brewery Cave

My judgement was based to a considerable extent on this curious photo:

It is said to be The Great East Side Cave.  Other sources claimed it was used for beer storage.  Rather nonsensical at first glance.  Yes, there is a brewery to be seen, but it is on the other side of the Mississippi River, and Mueller and Heinrich were known to have their own extensive cave system.  Why haul it up hill, across the nearby bridge and then back down a fairly steep hill?

But I found an interesting article in a Minneapolis paper just after the turn of the century.  To summarize....

The cave has been known since the earliest settlement of the area, and presumably earlier by the Native inhabitants.  It was at times known as Walker's Cave.  Although a natural cave it pretty clearly has been modified and expanded by the human hand.  I have seen some suggestion that the white sand that made up the walls was at one point mined commercially.

The exact dimensions are a little hard to make out from the article, but it speaks of a 100 foot long main passage, then a right angle turn and another 85 feet.  

After various speculation about pre-settlement use of the place the article says something very specific....that it was used for 12 years as a beer storage cave.

That's actually plausible.  Oh, probably not by the Mueller and Heinrich brewery for reasons mentioned.  But there were two other early breweries in town that needed storage space.  And for geological reasons did not have it close at hand.

Minneapolis came to be because of St. Anthony Falls.  Great for mills and a decided deterrent for any travel further up the river.  It is also the point at which the river is eroding its bed into a deep ravine carved out of the native sandstone.  Upstream, where the John Orth and the Gottlieb Glueck breweries were located, they had no stone faces to excavate storage caves.  It is known that they had small caves dug in Nicollet Island, but these were frankly pretty insufficient spaces.  I could see the East Side Cave being used by one of them.  Probably in the 1870's when their earlier storage spaces became inadequate but before they got mechanical refrigeration in the 1880's.

As to the later history of the cave it was vacant for a while.  Then a sort of hermit named Yellowstone Bill moved in.  Here's a bit about him!

After Bill's departure the cave was used for a time to grow mushrooms.  At some point in the 20th century the entrance was either sealed off or more likely incorporated into the network of steam and utility tunnels that are to be found on the site.  With the location mentioned in the article - one block south of the Washington Avenue Bridge - I think that on my last visit back in 2019 I was standing right on the spot where the picture had been taken.

Note:  You'd think that a character as interesting as Yellowstone Bill would get a few more mentions in the papers of the day.  And you would be correct.  We'll have an extended visit with him shortly.  His restless spirit no doubt lingers in this very spot.

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.

A Forgotten Wine Cave?

Last spring, on a bright early spring day across the river from Prairie du Sac Wisconsin I stopped in for a visit to a place that really does not fit the Forgotten Brewery cave template well at all.  I mean, it is a cave.  But its history has been well preserved.  And it appears to have been used primarily for wine production.  Welcome to the Wollersheim Winery.

The cave is on the grounds of the winery and evidently it is a place you can just stroll into when Covid restrictions are not in force.  Or you can take a tour of the entire estate and visit the cave that way.  I suspect there'd be a glass or two of wine involved.  I think it is also available as a private rental in less constrained times.

I had to content myself with outside pictures on this occasion, but there are plenty of inside photos around.

There is an outer portion dug into the hillside in the classic tunnel and arched roof fashion.

This leads back to a smaller cave cut directly into the bedrock.  Assorted winery memorabilia is parked here as décor.

The history of the cave is said to be as follows. 

The vineyard was established in the 1840's - pretty darn early for anything in Wisconsin - by a Hungarian nobleman named Agoston Haraszthy.  Agoston was a restless soul and lit out for the California gold fields in '49.  The establishment was taken over by a German immigrant named Peter Kehl.  A couple of generations made wine and brandy on the site until the turn of the 20th century.  When Prohibition came along in 1919 the last of the stock was sold off and the barrels mostly burned for firewood.

In 1972 a couple named Wollersheim purchased the property from Kehl's great grandson and with considerable effort put it back into operation as a winery.  

The existing stone buildings were built in stages by the Kehl family from the late 1850s into the post Civil war era.  Dates for the cave are a bit harder to nail down.  Supposedly Haraszthy dug some of it before he went west.  More definitively the Kehl family lived in an expanded section they excavated circa 1850 while their house was being constructed.  The cave was reopened to considerable fanfare in 2013.

I know of no other historic wine caves in my part of the world.  Given the specific conditions needed to grow decent grapes, the long term investment needed to do so, and the preponderance of thirsty Germans in the market place it is not a venture that many would attempt.  If I get around to a visit that involves passing the locked gate it would be interesting to see how it differs from a classic brewery cave.  Wine benefits from constant temperatures and I think I am seeing a couple of vents that would help with that.  But it should not need ice, so drainage channels and elaborate ante chambers to keep things cold  are probably not necessary.   

Exploring a flooded Brewery Cave. Safely even.

I've gotten to know some interesting people over the years.  One of them, Gabe, has similar interests in history, caves, gadgets.  Here's some of his recent work exploring the North Star Brewery Cave in Saint Paul with a home made underwater ROV!  

Some good stuff there.  I will say that looking over Youtube there are other videos of people exploring brewery caves.  Almost all of them are feature people taking legal and bodily risks that I do not endorse.  Gabe has it right.

Sand Man

Earlier this year I wrote about Sandland, the peculiar underground "playground" being excavated beneath rural Wisconsin.  Other obligations have kept me away, but I was able recently to go and work for an afternoon.  Moving sand.  Here I am in full kit.  Respirator, hearing protection, grubby clothes, steel toed boots.  I should have brought a headlamp.  As it turns out they had no loaners so I just duct taped a flashlight to the muffs and it worked fine.

Sandland looks a bit different in winter.  At least the outside of it does.

Inside of course there are no seasons.  In fact there is no day or night, no variation in temperature, no sound from the outside world.  There is just stone and the slowly advancing tunnels gnawing through it.

The procedure for tunneling is interesting but not easy to document in photos.  Some of it takes place in cramped, noisy spaces with plenty of sand in the air.  The actual excavation is done with these guys:

This is a heavy duty demolition hammer made by Milwaukee Tool.  Even these robust units can only stand 8 minutes of continuous work before they start to complain.  So the Sand People have three of them.  When the 8 minutes are up the excavator just steps away and goes to another face where the next tool is waiting.  And then the next.  This allows the sand removal person, yours truly, to get the debris moved with minimal interference in the digging.  Shovel the pulverized sand into buckets.  Buckets into some very clever wagons that can snake through winding tunnels.  Wagons dumped into hatches that lead to a miniature mine train.  The train gets hauled up and out to be dumped on the spoil heap via an elaborate cable system.

It is grinding labor.  You are shoveling at odd angles then hefting buckets and carrying them down twisting passages to where the wagon can reach.  Fill the wagon.  Pull it through more winding tunnels.  Dump it down the hatches into the train cars below.  Repeat.  You bump your head on things, you get sand everywhere, it is hard to breath through the respirator.  Conversation is impossible.

And it is also quite fun.  I felt as if I was working on a Dude Ranch run by dwarves.  Among other things it has given me a perspective, perhaps unique in the 21st century, of what it took to dig 19th century brewery caves.  Same geology.  Same basic tech.  To go full 19c just ditch the power tools and do it all with pickaxes supplemented here and there by some good old dynamite you could buy at the hardware store back in the day.

As discussed previously this is a long term project.  In the tool shed there is a chart documenting numbers of loads dumped on work days going back in time.

I suppose I could puzzle out how many tons of sand this is....each "car" in the train is about 500 pounds, but the number would be horrifying.

There is a long term plan here.  Very long term.  The expectation is that in 1000 years somebody could come here and enjoy the maze, the tavern, the donut room, the various shrines and attempts at timeless humor.  Geologically this is feasible.  But realistically?  People are transient and even determined, indomitable people eventually falter and pass from the scene.  Eventually so also passes knowledge.  Truth becomes lore and eventually myth.  What would the uninitiated think of Sandland if they stumbled upon it in 50 or 100 years?

I've suggested that an elaborate time capsule would be in order, as well as some kind of monumental inscription near the entrance.  This last in particular.  We are still figuring out things about Vindolanda based on 1800 year old bashed stonework that turns up.  And one assumes, or at least hopes, that Sandland will have fewer issues with religious iconoclasts and savage Picts and Visigoths.  But what should such an inscription say?

Maybe just SANDLAND with dates for the geology (going back many millions of years) and for the human efforts which are a Mayfly's cup of morning coffee in comparison.  But will the eccentric humor that pervades indeed defines the place become a factor?  What would future marveling discoverers make of something off beat?  Perhaps....

CROATOAN

or

OZYMANDIAS, KING OF KINGS

Addendum.  Below is a nice video showing recent work on The Sand Bar.  Gabe does excellent videography.