Peering at the Past – St. Paul Newspaper Features Brownsville “Coldness,” Twice

A roving newspaper reporter from the Twin Cities, Earl Chapin, stopped one night in Caledonia during the summer of 1947. He borrowed from the local newspaper publisher the “History of Houston County,” by Rev. Edward D. Neill, published in 1882. While reading that night, he came upon this item:

“About 1861, Mr. C. Gerhardt sunk a well and at the depth of 40 feet, water flowed in and froze, filling the well within a few feet of the top with solid ice, which remained until the winter of 1878 when Messrs. Johnson and Neumeier dug into the bluff a few rods east of the well, lower down, which caused he ice to melt so that now (1882) there is only a few feet in depth in the bottom of the well. The philosophy of this remarkable phenomenon has not been explained.”

Chapin dismissed the item, suspecting “that was pulling the long bow a little too far, particularly for a minister.”  However, the following day, the reporter chanced upon “an old-timer” named Mike Bissen, who asked, “Did you see our ice pit?”

Recalling what he had read the night before, Chapin answered, “No, but I’d sure like to.”

Accompanied by two boys, the reporter went to the “place of coldness,” where there were two man-made excavations about the same elevation along the hillside. Out of a horizontal shaft came a steady stream of cold air with enough force to rustle the leaves nearby and created a column of steam as it struck the moist, hot air of the afternoon. Then they walked 15 to 20 feet, to the “ice pit” with its moss-grown curbing in good condition. One lad climbed down and at about five feet dug up ice. Chapin’s published photograph showed the boy handing a handful of ice up to his early-teenage friend. The caption read, SNOWBALLS IN SUMMER – Don Rohrer hands a piece of snow to James Gunderson from the bottom of Brownsville’s “ice pit.”

Sixty-four years later in 2011, Rohrer (1933-2019) told local reporter Craig Moorhead, “I don’t remember too much about that day (in 1947) other than the fact that they wanted to get a picture of somebody with a handful of snow. I wasn’t too sure of that ladder. It had been built right in there, and those timbers were old and green, but at least it didn’t break. I went down about six feet, and I was standing on snow and ice.” 

The August 17, 1947, edition of the St. Paul SUNDAY Pioneer Press included Chapin’s article, “Mystery Since 1861 – BROWNSVILLE “ICE PIT” UNSOLVED.”  After that chance encounter with Mike Bissen, the article also noted, “Some years ago, Mike Bissen used to clear the debris from the openings which aided in the efficiency of the natural refrigerating system. During Fourth of July celebrations Mike would bring down “snow” frozen from the ice pit for snowball fights, and once a hogshead of it was taken to a summer celebration in Caledonia.”

Fr. John McShane, pastor of St. Patrick’s Church in Brownsville in 1967, remembered going up to the ice pit and bringing down snow in the middle of August in the 1930s about the same era that Aaron Holzwarth (according to his son John) experienced the cold air when he went to get the cows. Longtime owner of the property, Eugene “Sam” Heintz (1933-2017), shoveled snow into the pit one winter (probably 1960s), and surely enough, the snow was still there for another summer snowball fight.

Heintz said below the horizontal opening was once a building called the Farmer’s Home. “They had picnics there in the summertime. They’d come down Sunday from La Crosse. It was cool down there from the air that came down the hill. People would stay there … and they had a shed for the horses.” It was also said that dogs would enter the opening and come out with frosty fur.

Adding to the puzzling melting and freezing timeline was an event sometime after Fr. McShane extracted snow in the 1930s and before reporter Chapin photographed snow in 1947. Not long after Sam Heintz’s father purchased the property in 1941, Sam – then a boy – but telling the story in 2011, said, “After we bought the place, we cleared the openings, and we went down the vertical shaft 14 feet to the bottom. It was all cribbed up with old timbers. There wasn’t any ice at the bottom when we went in, but it was very wet.”

Twenty years after his first Pioneer Press article, Chapin returned to Brownsville Township in 1967. Virginia (Mrs. Sam) Heintz told him that she and her husband had been up to the ice pit two years before and they had taken ice from It. She walked Chapin up to the ice pit, which was then a wooded area instead of what had once been a hillside pasture. The pit had been filled with leaves, which he wrote, “proved a most difficult obstacle, and there was an unearthly coldness in that hole. About seven feet below ground level, Virginia dug up leaves interlaced with frost. The ice was just below. We let it go at that. After all, there’s another 35 feet to the bottom of that well.”

In 2024, Virginia recalled that summer day in 1967 when although you could no longer see the horizontal opening, you could feel the much cooler temperature near it – still as Chapin had described it 20 years previous, a “place of coldness.”

Nine years later, a 1976 Winona newspaper article stated, “The ice remains the year round … the well of ice is still in effect.”

The “ice pit” was often referred to as a well, but Sam Heintz said it was not a water well, but a mining shaft while searching for lead. “That’s what the old folks always said.” But why did they expect to find lead? Was Chapin ever able to find an explanation for the ice? To be continued – with soldiers’ secrets and more…

Sources: interviews with current residents; History of Houston County (1882); “Mystery Since 1861 – Brownsville “Ice Pit” Unsolved” by Earl Chapin, St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press (Aug. 17, 1947); “Jack Frost Plays Cool Trick in Brownsville” by Earl Chapin, St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press (Aug.20, 1967); “Brownsville: well, wildcats and lead,” Winona Sunday News (October 1976); “A Brownsville mystery: Local ice pit has never been explained,” by Craig Moorhead, Brownsville Bugle (2011).