MINNESOTA CAVES: HISTORY AND LORE

This illustrated presentation highlights Minnesota caves with significant narrative history using historic images from the National Cave Museum in Kentucky. While most of the caves still exist, some are not publicly accessible, and some never did exist except in the minds of explorers.

Several Minnesota caves such as the Giant Beaver Cave and Petrified Indian Cave are of prehistoric significance. Apart from legendary caves associated with the Dakota god of the underworld, the earliest historical reference to caves in Minnesota was by French fur-trader Le Sueur who described saltpeter caves at Lake Pepin in 1700. Relocated in 2004, the cave sediments were found to have high nitrate concentrations. Carver’s Cave in St. Paul, with its subterranean lake, is the baptismal font of Minnesota caving, having been visited by British colonial explorer Jonathan Carver in 1766-67. Like nearby Fountain Cave, the purported birthplace of the capital city, it was described by early travelers on the Mississippi River. Both are natural piping caves in Ordovician St. Peter Sandstone.

Some early industries are associated with the many artificial caves in Mushroom Valley (now Lilydale Regional Park) in St. Paul. Initially excavated in the St. Peter Sandstone for silica (used in foundry molds, glass making, and mortar) they were repurposed for mushroom growing, cheese ripening, beer lagering, and night clubs. Neighboring Minneapolis has Schiek’s Cave, an anthropogenic sandstone maze cave, and Channel Rock Cavern with suspected hypogenic origins. The collapse of Chute’s Cave in 1880 left a 300-foot diameter sinkhole on Main Street.

Fillmore County, the heart of Minnesota karst country, is the location of the state’s best known show caves, including Mystery Cave (12 miles long) and Niagara Cave whose namesake waterfall accentuates its vertical relief (150 feet). John Ackerman’s Minnesota Cave Preserve, established in 1989, consists of 43 privately owned caves. Extinct scimitar cat bones were found in one of them, Tyson’s Spring Cave, in 2008. All of these are hosted in Ordovician carbonates.

Minnesota’s Precambrian rocks also host caves, as among the glacial potholes of the St. Croix River, an ice cave on the Kettle River, and the littoral caves of the North Shore of Lake Superior, created by wave action, such as Cave of Waves, enjoyed by kayakers.