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.
Subterranean twin cities
Greg Brick.
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c2009.
A professional geologist and author, Brick has written numerous scholarly and general-interest articles about caves and underground spaces; his work has been featured in National Geographic Adventure Magazine and on the History Channel. Based on extensive professional study of the area, his book provides general readers with an armchair tour of the sometimes dangerous but fascinating collection of tunnels, caves, and industrial spaces that make up the subterranean landscape of Minnesota's Twin Cities. These include tube-like natural caves, underground streams, and below-ground spaces used by brewing, mushroom farming, cheese ripening, silica mining, and flour-milling businesses, as well as utility industries. Illustrated with b&w photos. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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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.
Great caves of the world
Tony Waltham.
Richmond Hill, Ont. ; Buffalo, N.Y. : Firefly Books, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 112).
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.
Article by: St. Louis Public Library staff
