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Should the caves be sealed or opened?
First a complete survey of the caves needs to be done. Remember most of these caves were built as places to store things (beer mostly) in a controlled environment in the mid-later part of the 1800's . They were one of the first things really built to stay in St Paul. I doubt that there has never been a complete survey to determine the extent of their size, which varies, air vents that were put in (yea even back then they new they needed ventilation of some sort), and find basically every nook and cranny of them. There are alot of them, it will cost money to do this properly and completely.
Should we be able to discover all of the openings they can be sealed. Air vents can be filled with concrete. You can look at the cliffs along the W7th side of the River and see that concrete blocks and other things, not so eye appealing, that effectively have sealed certain sections for access via the cliffs. This is probably not something that would be desired over on the West side cause as I say it is not that eye appealing. They can be sealed once and for all but it will take back filling them from the farthest point inside all the way to the outside floor to ceiling with concrete or something similar.
Should they be opened and used as a tourist attraction? Again several things need to be known, but what many do not know is that as you get near the West side of the High Bridge near the river, you will find that many businesses have utilized some of the caves as places to do business. Obviously they can, or at least some can, be made safe to use.
Thus it could be assumed that some of these caves could be made safe enough to be a tourist attraction. Again this is gonna cost money too. Cleaning them out, making them safe, figuring out the history of each particular cave, tour guides, etc... I am also sure that there are many caves that this simply will not work. On the other hand I think that there are enough of them that it would make a good attraction to the Harriet Island area.
All you have to do is head about 10 minutes into WI and you see signs for the Crystal Caves (?) a cave complex that well is less interesting than this could be (I mean we had lots of BIG TIME criminals that used these caves). Marketed properly you would have people coming to St Paul, City of the Caves, just to spend $10 to take a tour of some holes in the ground. Another example of what a hole in the ground can do is up in Sudan MN... about 1500 person town (on the way to Ely) with an old Iron Mine that the parks department run tours through (I think it is a federal or state park). But each of these places seem to attract enough visitors to keep them open. Not to mention the little tourist stands they sell T-shirts and other assorted nick nacks at.
We should not rush to judgement on the caves of St Paul, they may just be something worthy of taking advantage of, but it all depends on a really good survey to find out what is where. Without doing that, anything that is done, fill them or use them is an exercise in futility.
-- Sincerely, John Birrenbach W 7th Neighborhood, St Paul MN
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"Six years on the council has trained me to feign interest for long periods of time"
Chris Coleman Jan 21, 2004
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