Brainerd Minnesota History

Common topics and questions...commentary:

-Popcorn Wagons:

JIMMY'S WAGON: 100 S. 6th. St. This was a mobile, yet "stationary" fixture in the 1950's, on the SW corner of the RR crossing at 6th.  St. Listed in the 1951 City Directory.  AKA Jimmy’s Popcorn Wagon.

JOLLY TIME POPCORN STAND: 6th. & Laurel Sts. Listed in the 1951 City Directory. Deb Garro Tribby The popcorn stand was run by Rudy Brick. He lived on the corner on 7th and Willow Street. I'm showing these photo's to my dad, Larry Garro and when this one came up the first thing he said was, "There's Rudy Brick's popcorn stand!" Kathy Garro Porter-11/2015 FB

Ski Jump, toboggan slide, Boom Lake area:

2015/11/16:

Deb Garro Tribby My father, Larry Garro, and a few neighbor kids went down this ski jump on a toboggan around 1940. Andy Peterson, Donny Cox, & Hank Liners. The only thing left of the sled was the rope that held it together. Kathy Garro Porter

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Fert Faust: As usual, Ann M. Nelson has this interesting Boom Lake area all rounded up in her "Special Features" on the CWCHS website. Those poles with bars you see on the hills are from an old leftover excersie trail sysem done back in the late 1980's or so. Many were pull-up bars. I have heard that vandalism put a stop to it all, but I have no good info on this neat project. This area is just ripe for some of the best hiking trail systems around! And yes, those old toboggan hill still work great! Check it out here:http://www.crowwinghistory.org/brainerd_structures.html

-Tunnels under Brainerd, MN :

I have been hearing about “tunnels” under Brainerd’s buildings and streets for decades, and have only found one.  Let’s first define tunnel.  I assume we all are referring to a cave-like walkway made for HUMAN use, to get from one area to another.  I’ll call this a human tunnel, and I know of only one that was built for that purpose, in 1979, not 1879.  This type of tunnel would go from building to building, adjacent or even under a street.  These should NOT include storm sewer culverts or sanitary sewers or pipes.  All towns of even smaller size have some sort of storm sewers below.  It is doubtful that ANY sanitary or storm sewer was ever connected to a human tunnel.  In Brainerd in the early days, sometimes the sanitary and storm sewer were connected, and made a direct path to the river!  It was just that last downtown renovation where building rooftop rain was no longer put in to our sanitary sewer, and now put in the street storm sewers.  It would be pretty difficult to access a storm sewer from a basement without mother nature insisting on flooding the basement!  Years ago I started jotting down every story I have run across, no matter how wild, or unsubstantiated.  There are surely more.  Here ya’ go!

-In the early 70’s ‘somebody I know’ walked in a STORM sewer from about 7th & Laurel Sts. by S & L Stores and came up on the corner of 6th & Washington.  It was a regular freeway down there, they aid.

-I used to install draft beer lines in most of the downtown in the early 1970’s era, so had occasion to get in to many tavern basements.  From time to time, we even had to run lines from one building to the next where the cooler was under one building, but the beer taps in another.  There was always at least one hole either made when built, or later poked in to the dividing walls that would act as a conduit for our use.  Some of these I could shinny through.  Most such “tunnels” were for steam heat, forced air heat, gas or water pipes, or electrical…sometimes a combination of all.  MOST had been concrete block or brick and mortared shut long ago.  A lot of this was ordered by the fire marshal to eliminate fire breaches.  I was always amazed how many basements could be accessed from just one shop owner’s trap door or stairway.  The rats must have loved it.  None of these holes would I consider a tunnel built for human transport.

-In the late 1960’s, and up to the early 70’s, I used to deliver beer to many downtown bars from the sidewalk entrance.  These were large steel trap doors, maybe 2-2x4’ hinged doors, that led to the basement.  One had to go in the bar, get the key to that trap door, open the door from the basement to the shaft under the trap doors, and clank the doors loudly so some pedestrian on the sidewalk did not trip or skin a shinbone…or fall in.  Some had a mid-level ledge to hand the beer down to your helper, and others had a wooden plank for a skid ramp.  All are now gone, and the basement doors closed off with brick or block, accounting for what some call mystery doors.  One I recall was the American Legion on Front St.  There were some in Staples, Minn. as well.  Some deliveries were made from the sidewalk via steps to the basement, such as on the east side of the Pit Stop bar today, or the north side of the old First National Bank, now Design Consign.  Some of these had widows to get some light and air to the basement.  They are only about 3 of these left in all of Brainerd, and there were likely dozens.  These may look like entrances to tunnels, but they are just basement access points.

-The STORM culvert from the south side of “The Fill”, now Washington St. is tall enough to walk crouching, all the way to the river by the cemetery landing.  It was built in 1914 as a culvert under the roadbed, but continued all the way to the river to contain “Ravine Creek”, for lack of a better name.  Under The Fill it collapsed and was replaced in 2007.

As a kid ‘somebody I know’ used to crawl in the culvert from “the hole between the fills”, under E. Washington St. still called The Fill, (this culvert from 1914 collapsed in 2007, and was repaired) all the way to the Franklin Football Field coming up in a man hole on about the 30 yard line N., then in one just S. of Cemetery Rd. on the crook in the road, both of which are still there, then at the river.  This whole run was almost walkable without bending over, of course they were smaller then!  I’ll bet they wouldn’t do this now if you paid them!  We never could find the inlet to the RR fill on the S. side (at about E. of Front St.), and I still can’t, but there was and still is an outlet on the N. side made of concrete, but appears to be relatively new.  It still flows most of the year.  It has a vertical concrete distribution box as the horizontal culvert is now lower than the level of the fill-to-fill hole bottom.  There must have been SOME kind of culvert there way back when, whenever they filled this to allow “Ravine Creek” to flow, or it would create a reservoir/lake.  Ravine Creek flows all the time except maybe in August when it’s really dry. This might be called a tunnel” by some, but it’s just a storm sewer or culvert.

Some other stories of TUNNELS:

-The buildings at the State Hospital had tunnels connecting them.  This was the case, and was quite a modern wonder for its day.   Now THESE are tunnels, made for human transportation between buildings.

-Tunnels also ran from the State Hospital all the way in to Brainerd…doubtful.  Storm sewers, sure.

-One went from the Ransford Hotel to the Park Opera House, for the actors.  Now this makes some sense, but was it just a storm sewer USED for that purpose?  If so, how did the rainwater keep out of the basements?  No one at the city has been able to corroborate this.  If this is true, the tunnel must have come 3 years after the Ransford was built in 1904.  There was no hotel that I know of across the street from the 1901 Park Opera House at that time, so little reason to make a connecting tunnel.  I would think any tunnel crossing a street would have a hard time intersecting a storm sewer at that same level.

-One guy told me he used to work the night shift at the Ransford Hotel in the early 1970’s.  When he made his rounds, he would go in the basement from the original hotel to the Ransford Annex checking on locks for the night.  He did not refer to any tunnel per se.  It would make sense that when adding on to a building, they would be connected in the basement as well by a door at least. 

-The Lakeland Building (built as the Model Laundry in 1913, and is the current Last Turn Saloon) had a huge steam boiler and sold excess steam heat to several other buildings, possible y 4 on that block.  These steam pipe conduits are still visible but not accessible.  It would make sense that these tunnels would be large enough to provide for a worker to maintain the pipes.

-There is indeed still a human tunnel, the ONLY human tunnel I know of, from the 1920 old courthouse to the Land Services Building (LSB), formerly the Human Services Building.  Anyone can go in there today by just walking down to the basement of the old courthouse.  There may be one from the LSB to the old Law Enforcement Center (LEC) as well, to allow transport of prisoners, but I have not seen it and these would be of modern design, say1979.

- “In the early days the railroad shops used the tunnels for piping steam.  They offered this as a free service to downtown.”  I have never heard that the NP provided free steam.  It could be they sold it, but it’s an awfully long way to pipe steam.  This story should be verifiable in old records some place!

-Any of the above “tunnels” or conduits may well have been used during Prohibition, but they were likely not built at that time for that use.  It’s doubtful all that digging and concrete work could be done without the knowledge of the city or local PD.  I’ve been in many of the basements in downtown Brainerd, and have yet to find any tunnel that is walkable, or even easily crawlable, from one building to the next.  I realize that most conversations on this topic refer to tunnels that were built long before any of us living now were there, but I have found no full size doorways bricked up either, other than the above-mentioned sidewalk entrances.  Any connecting spaces between buildings that I have seen had a utility of one kind or another running through it.  This is not to say there are none!  I just have not seen any.  We’ll find more on this in old newspapers in time.  An older fireman or city worker would be a good place to start asking questions!  Or, a plumber!!!

In conclusion, although the idea of “tunnels” under our town is interesting, I think most of it is just good ol’ fun urban legend.  –CWF, 11/16/2015, UPDATED: 10/25/2016