Dr. Greg Brick
While strolling along the St. Paul waterfront in the late 1980s I came across a manhole lid upon which the words “Trout Brook” had been crudely spray-painted in fluorescent, orange letters. Scanning the riverbanks in the vicinity, I spied a cavernous sewer outfall, more than garage-sized, disgorging a multi-hued stream of water to the Mississippi […]
A three kilometer reach of the Mississippi River gorge near downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, is known locally as “Mushroom Valley” because of the abundance of man-made mushroom caves in the sandstone bluffs. Mushroom growing lasted a century, from its introduction by Parisian immigrants in the 1880s until the last cave ceased production in the 1980s […]
“A great city is like a sieve.” Frederick Van Duzee As you walk the streets of downtown St. Paul there’s little to suggest anything special underfoot. It’s no until standing below the Mississippi River bluffs that you glimpse little holes in the cliffs near the Wabasha Street Bridge and see the magical “doors to nowhere” […]
I’ve been told repeatedly over the years that historic LaMoille Cave was destroyed by highway construction. This is a pernicious error, as anyone can discover simply by taking the trouble to visit the cave, like I did. But before I describe how this error gained currency, some of you may want to know a little […]