Harriet Island Caves
September 12th, 2006

      I had always heard about 'the caves'. In fact, in 2003 when I was scouting locations for a movie, I saw an intriguing cave entrance behind a bait shop and wished the bait shop would go belly-up so I could explore.


Three years later, my wish was granted!


So my friend
    and I  




circumvented the chain link fence by walking around it (!), and spent the next two hours exploring the caves.

 
 

The walls are a very soft sandstone, and the frequent large piles of fallen-down cave material we encountered made us rather worried about the possibility of a collapse.
We tried not to make any loud noises or bump the ceiling.
There is some painted graffiti, but most of the vandalism is actually carved right into the walls. They're really so soft you can make quite a scratch with just your finger.

The caves had obviously been used for storage and, in some cases, garbage disposal.
 
In fact, the adjoining caves were still in use by the adjacent roofing business. We didn't take anything, but some of the antique equipment they had there was very interesting.



There was also a cool barred and blocked-up passage entrance at the edge of where we were able to explore.
I imagine it leads to another part of the cave system, perhaps the bit behind the auto salvage yard.

The caves stretch for quite a ways along the river bank, going all the way back to about the old staircase/fire tower in South St. Paul.

I imagine this used to be the path the river took, before the channel behind Harriet Island was filled in in the '50's.
In places the caverns rise quite dramatically, and there are some surprisingly large open spaces inside.
 
In one hallway was a rusted work table, with Grand Marnier bottles scattered all around it. That's expensive stuff!
Portions of the tunnel were apparently at one time electrified.


Oh, we also went and explored an abandoned coal power plant, but you wouldn't be interested in that.

Or Would You? ---->