| This old brewery cave, excavated in the St Peter Sandstone at least as early as the 1890s, was the greatest "party cave" under St. Paul, Minnesota, for many years. The Banholzer Brewery itself no longer exists. During one bust, cops stood at one entrance, shot off tear gas, and stationed others at the exit to arrest the wild partiers. The cave could be entered through a small building on the north side of Shepard Road, or through a sewer tunnel on the river bluffs (now replaced by a small diameter pipe). The cave was slurried full of sand in 1991 during the widening of Shepard Road. Famous features of this cave included the so-called "Pegasus" mural--an enormous winged horse in red spray paint, "Tolkien Tunnel," beloved of Hobbit fans, a giant skull with a punk rock hairdo, and of course that vulviform erosional modification of a vertical joint in the stone that I won't mention by name. My own personal recollections of this great cave include standing under Shepard Road and hearing the rumble of traffic overhead, which shook loose a perpetual rainfall of sand grains, and having a desperate paint-sniffer stalk me from room to room through the abandoned galleries late at night. Pretty spooky! |
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