Off the Shelf
5/6/2009 3:05 PMIn the late 1980s, Greg Brick (B.S. ’85, B.A. ’93), then an undergraduate student in geology at the University of Minnesota, heard a rumor about a cavern located under the east bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. At the time, the existence of Chute’s Cave was the subject of dispute within local caving circles. Some experts insisted that historical references were merely the product of an elaborate 19th-century hoax.
Brick wasn’t so sure. Armed with an old sewer map and a flashlight, the St. Paul native decided to find out for himself. He entered a crack in the wall of an industrial water channel under the old Pillsbury A Mill and wedged his body into a tight, rock-strewn passage. He commenced a rough, suffocating crawl, worried he might wind up trapped at a dead end.
But Brick’s persistence was rewarded when he emerged from the shaft into a large, triangular cavern 50 feet wide and 15 feet high with spectacular flowstone formations created when dripping water deposits layers of minerals on the rocks below.
“It was my first significant discovery,” recalls Brick, now 46. “People were saying there was nothing of interest underneath the Twin Cities. When I realized that I could make these sorts of discoveries, that there was so little being done in the way of research, that’s when I got serious about it.”
Indeed, Brick’s eureka moment ignited an obsession with urban spelunking, now the subject of his newly published book, Subterranean Twin Cities (University of Minnesota Press). With a deft blend of science, history, and personal narrative, Brick recounts dozens of subsequent expeditions into the netherworlds of the Twin Cities. Over the years, he has made countless journeys into other natural caverns, man-made old mushroom caves, utility tunnel labyrinths, and storm sewers.
There is little that he hasn’t been willing to endure to satisfy his epic curiosity. More than once, Brick immersed himself in a fast-flowing river of raw sewage in a quest to reach Schiek’s Cave, an enormous anthropogenic void located 90 feet below a downtown Minneapolis strip club.
As Brick is careful to warn readers, such undertakings are not without hazard—both legal and physical. In the case of the Schiek’s expedition, Brick once inhaled “aerosolized intestinal pathogens,” which rendered him violently ill. Brick dubbed that sickness “Rinker’s Revenge” in reference to Andrew Rinker, the 19th-century Minneapolis engineer who designed the city’s sewer line.
Subterranean Twin Cities is sprinkled with similarly cheeky and inventive nomenclature. In the course of one long, lonely summer spent exploring a 30-mile maze of sanitary sewers in St. Paul, Brick took to calling the labyrinth “The Diamond Mine.” The reason? He hoped to recruit squeamish friends to join him on the ghastly expeditions by “presenting them with the venal prospect of finding wedding rings that had been flushed down the drain.”
Such jokes aside, Brick is a serious-minded scholar of the underground. Even the Diamond Mine joke has a historical echo. In 19th-century England, Brick writes, a group of laborers known as “toshers” made their living searching for valuables in London sewers. Indeed, many cities have legendary underground labyrinths. “Sewer tourists have a respectable lineage, going back to the ancient poets who explored the Cloaca Maxima, the famous sewer that drained ancient Rome,” writes Brick, who is currently at work on his doctorate in geology at the University and estimates that he has published approximately 100 articles about caving and geology.
Brick takes pains to distance himself from his cohorts in the burgeoning urban exploration scene. In recent years, scores of Web sites documenting the exploits of such explorers have led to what Brick refers to as a surge in “exploratory herds” poking around in urban caves, sewers, and other subterranean points of interest. This, he says, has drawn the attention of authorities concerned about liability and possible damage to municipal infrastructure.
“There’s way too many people doing this now,” he says. “I think most of these Web sites are just a bunch of isolated stories about trespassing somewhere. That doesn’t make for a comprehensive history.”
In Subterranean Twin Cities, a comprehensive, enlightening history is precisely what Brick has created.
—Mike Mosedale
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