Dr. Greg Brick
In 1700, the French fur-trader Pierre-Charles Le Sueur (1657-1704), while ascending the Mississippi River, described saltpeter caves along the west side of Lake Pepin, in Minnesota. This is the earliest record of cave saltpeter in America according to Shaw (1992, p. 52). Le Sueur’s Journal, under the dates September 10 to September 14, 1700, reports […]
I submitted this story fragment for a literary contest in the Star Tribune in 2014. Who knows where it would have led?
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 […]