Caves of St. Louis
In prehistoric times, what is now St. Louis was covered by seas; over the millennia, thick layers of limestone formed where there had been sea beds. The slow steady action of water and time honeycombed the limestone and left it full of unexpected caverns and passages. What appears-on the surface-to be completely solid and reliable, turns out to be merely a deceptive façade.
Missouri caves in history and legend
H. Dwight Weaver.
Columbia : University of Missouri Press, c2008.
Missouri has been likened to a "cave factory" because its limestone bedrock can be slowly dissolved by groundwater to form caverns, and the state boasts more than six thousand caves in an unbelievable variety of sizes, lengths, and shapes. Dwight Weaver has been fascinated by Missouri's caves since boyhood and now distills a lifetime of exploration and research in a book that will equally fascinate readers of all ages.
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St. Louis' underground fascinates local writers
Michael Kahn used the Cherokee Cave, a few miles south of the Arch, as part of the Rachel Gold mystery novel, 'Due diligence'.
Underground St. Louis also intrigued Eileen Dryer in 'Bad medicine' and Laurell K. Hamilton in 'The lunatic cafe'. |
This liability was turned into an asset. St. Louis' hidden caves provided acres of inexpensive cool storage.
It was a setting made to order for breweries, who used the natural caves for lagering rooms and storage. In the 19th Century, the number of St. Louis breweries approached 50, and most of them were built to take advantage of attached cave systems. St. Louis became the brewery capital of the United States; the Anheuser-Busch corporation on Pestalozzi was built on caves.
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Uhrig's Cave, opening beneath Jefferson and Washington Streets, was the most elaborate of the St. Louis commercial caves. Associated with a brewery, it contained a beer garden and 300-seat theater. It was the scene of the American premiere of Gilbert and Sullivan's 'H.M.S. Pinafore.'
The site retained its civic importance (although ABOVE ground) when the St. Louis Coliseum was built over Uhrig's Cave in 1908. |
Other commercial uses were found for the underground space. Brick vaults and flo oring made the passages more reliably useful; fairly simple adaptations allowed the caves to be used as warehouses, night clubs, roller rinks, mushroom farms. When Prohibition took effect, the hidden galleries took on a new life as speakeasies along the western edge of downtown.
Today the caves are sealed and almost forgotten. They are choked with rubble and mainly impassable. Access is forbidden, and about the only use they've gotten in recent decades has been as an occasional Halloween season haunted house. Most St. Louisans have no idea that their down-to-earth city has always been balanced on the edge of the abyss.
Missouri caves in history and legend
H. Dwight Weaver.
Columbia : University of Missouri Press, c2008.
Missouri has been likened to a "cave factory" because its limestone bedrock can be slowly dissolved by groundwater to form caverns, and the state boasts more than six thousand caves in an unbelievable variety of sizes, lengths, and shapes. Dwight Weaver has been fascinated by Missouri's caves since boyhood and now distills a lifetime of exploration and research in a book that will equally fascinate readers of all ages.
Encyclopedia of caves and karst science
John Gunn, editor.
New York : Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004.
This encyclopedia contains 351 entries exploring a multidisciplinary range of topics dealing with natural caves and karst landscapes, defined within as "terrain with distinctive hydrology and landforms arising from the combination of high rock solubility and well- developed solution channel (secondary) porosity underground." The encyclopedia strives to fairly represent all the regions of cave and karst locations. The entries are presented alphabetically and also listed under the following themes: archaeology, art in caves, and paleontology; biospeleology (including ecology, fauna, and other biological topics); caves and caving; cave and karst regions; conservation and management; geoscience; history; and resources and development. Fitzroy Dearborn is an imprint of Taylor & Francis. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Entering the stone : on caves and feeling through the dark
Barbara Hurd.
Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
Barbara Hurd begins her foray into the increasingly popular pursuit of caving as we all would -- with a panic attack. Nevertheless, as her hunger to understand caves and caving increases, she lures the reader in deeper as well, to the extraordinary fascination of these dark spaces. Hurd illuminates the natural history and spiritual territory of caves as powerfully as Kathleen Norris portrayed the Dakotas and Barry Lopez the Arctic. She ranges from sacred caves in India to secret caves in Arizona and, with passionately informed prose, makes these places -- with their stalactites and blind cavefish and ancient galleries of white flowstone and soda straws -- come alive. Characters weave in and out of her story as well: a childhood friend dying of cancer, a wildlife biologist who specializes in bat guano, an elderly Indian guide, and the disembodied voice of a fellow caver, never seen, with whom she spends a profoundly illuminating half-hour. Entering the Stone is a rich and compelling natural history of some of the most unusual places on earth, as well as a stunning investigation of dark interiors, both terrestrial and human. Book jacket.
Caves : exploring hidden realms
Michael Ray Taylor.
Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, 2001.
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 212) and index.
- Ice: into the heart of Greenland: A vast twilit world -- Breaking the ice -- In search of new life -- Out of the fall zone -- Water: rivers beneath the Yucatan: Land of Cenotes -- The cave divers -- Rivers beneath the bush -- Incidents of travel -- Earth: pit bouncing and crawlway wriggling: No caves to speak of -- In the belly of the planet -- Does it go? -- The hidden realm.
Article by: St. Louis Public Library staff.
