Mushroom Valley’s nightclub era began as Prohibition (1919–1934) was winding down. There were two nightclubs here in the 1930s: Mystic Caverns and Castle Royal. A local mushroom grower recalled “the bumper-to-bumper cars that poured past here day and night to those nightclubs.” Oliver Towne called Mushroom Valley “one of the oddest night club belts in the world.”
Mystic Caverns—not to be confused with Fandell’s Mystic Tavern—is forgotten today, but it was beloved in the 1930s. “The most novel café and night club in the country” opened on April 8, 1933, about the same time that the classic version of the movie King Kong, starring Fay Wray, hit the movie theaters. Garish newspaper advertisements for Mystic Caverns, with leering skulls, promoted “St. Paul’s Underground Wonderland,” advising readers to “See the Beautiful Silver Cave and the Rainbow Shower of 2,000 Mirrors. Dine, Drink, and dance to the rhythmic tunes of Jack Foster’s Ten Cavemen,” spelling out the location exactly: “Cross the Wabasha Street Bridge at the new St. Paul Courthouse. Travel…up the river road under the High Bridge to the huge Neon Skull and Crossbones.”
On opening night, four hundred people had to be turned away, and Mystic Caverns was rapidly enlarged so as to hold eight hundred patrons. Revelers entered the nightclub through a large King Kong–head portal in the sandstone bluffs. During construction, liquid glass was sprayed on the walls. There were three main chambers, one of which contained the ballroom, the Silver Cave. According to one patron, the cave contained “a monstrous chandelier, with lights flashing all different colors, two stories above the polished-wood dance floor.” The other two chambers held, respectively, the main dining room and “a regular old-time bar, 40 feet long, with brass foot rail and all, where light lunches and beverages will be served.” “A system of loud speakers wafts the music from the main dining room into the farthest recesses of the innumerable smaller caverns which serve as private dining rooms,” it was reported.
“Entertainment features will be in keeping with the mystic atmosphere, providing palmists, mind readers, psychics and a magician for the amusement of guests.” Some of the magical effects were produced by a stage manager for the famous magician Howard Thurston. As if that was not enough, “Ghosts will stalk the river bank, ‘living’ skeletons will move about its cavernous rooms, weird specters will peer from hidden recesses and women will float above the heads of the orchestra.” By far the biggest draw, however, was the nude fan dancer, Sally Rand.
One of the cave’s owners, Jack Foster, was the leader of the St. Paul police band, which made it all the more ironic when a Ramsey County grand jury investigation led to the closure of Mystic Caverns in 1934 for running a subterranean casino.
After its brief but meteoric glory days, Mystic Caverns was used for potato storage and in its misunderstood old age was dubbed Horseshoe Cave by the cavers of the 1980s, unaware of its romantic past. In the 1990s, I diligently examined the infinite palimpsest of graffiti on the cave’s walls, especially in the former ballroom, hoping for old signatures (or any artifact) from the nightclub era, but could find nothing really convincing. It had been stripped bare, like the fan dancers who had wowed crowds more than half a century earlier.
Excerpted from SUBTERRANEAN TWIN CITIES.