Go to the venue. Do not go into the rest of the cave complex. That distinction has killed people.
The Wabasha Street Caves are cut into the sandstone cliffs on the west bank of the Mississippi in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in the West Side neighbourhood directly across the river from downtown. They are manmade, which technically makes them mines rather than caves, and they date back to the 1840s.
The list of uses is the history of the city in miniature: storage of food and belongings, growing mushrooms, speakeasies, music, dancing, and finally an entertainment and tourist venue. In the 1920s they ran as a restaurant and nightclub called the Wabasha Street Speakeasy. Josie and William Lehmann opened the Castle Royal, built into the side of the caves, on 26 October 1933; it closed in the late 1930s when the war came and the place went back to growing mushrooms. Castle Royal 2 opened sometime in the 1970s as a disco.
The gangsters are a legend. The caves are said to have been frequented by John Dillinger and Ma Barker, but there is no evidence any such visit happened.
The present use is genuinely good. For the past thirty years the caves have hosted Swing Night every Thursday, with professional live big bands and vocalists playing the Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Count Basie and Duke Ellington repertoire, open to the public and drawing crowds in the hundreds. There are historical tours and Murder Mystery Tours too.
Now the warning. The complex extends well beyond the part the venue uses, and people have died in it: two teenagers in 1992 and three in 2004, all from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning caused by fires lit inside, and at least three others since 1988 from drowning, fire and a collapse. Saint Paul has blocked entrances and posted warnings. Rescue workers found the 2004 group about 600 feet in.
Buy a ticket. Dance on a Thursday. Stay out of the rest.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
