Category Archives: Tunnels

August 1, 2010
West Bank Tailraces– also posted in Basements, Drains, Tailraces

By the mid-1880s, 25 flour mills, a woolen mill, a sawmill, and the city waterworks lined an extended canal. The mills were surrounded by machine shops, cooper shops, and other milling support industries. Railroad tracks were interspersed among the buildings paralleling the canal.
By 1890 the platform sawmills were gone and hydroelectricity was the up and [...]

January 30, 2010
Nicollet Island Tunnels & Satans Cave– also posted in Caves

Nicollet Island was originally the site of an Indian maple sugar camp, and there’s still a street named Maple Place reflecting this. The Islands woods were “so dense with timber and undergrowth, that it was impossible to penetrate it,” according to one early visitor, who also reported of thousands of passenger pigeons. Half a mile [...]