Peering at the Past – Two “Cold” Mysteries on a Brownsville Hillside

Second in a series

What Chris Gerhard got was ice, not what he wanted. But ice comes from water; was water what he sought when sinking a 40-foot shaft into a hillside near Brownsville, Minnesota in the early 1860s? Most thought it was a water well; some later oral history indicated otherwise.

Two young teenage boys, James Gunderson and Don Rohrer, were photographed in 1947 at the Brownsville ice pit for a story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Twenty years later in 1967, Virginia (Mrs. Sam) Heintz was photographed at the same site by the same reporter, Earl Chapin, for a second Pioneer Press article about a mysterious, yet unexplained Houston County phenomenon. A well filled with water and then froze. Several feet away, cold air flowed out of an opening in the hillside.

When Rohrer and property owner Sam Heintz, as senior citizens, revisited the ice pit site 44 years later in 2011, it was only a depression with no opening or cribbing after dirt and rocks had washed down and plugged the entrance “The opening wasn’t that wide,” recalled Rohrer. Heintz surmised, “The cribbing must have rotted, and it fell in.”

It was then that Heintz added another twist to the story. The “ice pit” was early referred to as a well, but Heintz told local reporter Craig Moorhead it was not a well but instead a mine shaft in search for lead. “They found some, but it was too low grade to bother with. That’s what the old folks always said.”

But what led anyone to believe there was lead to be found? That story dates back before statehood to 1832, when according to an 1882 Houston County history, a party of United States soldiers encamped along the Mississippi River below what was later known as Wild Cat Bluff. They were accompanied by several engineers, who had experience with the discovery of lead downriver in Galena, Ill., (galena is a mineral and primary ore of lead). They prospected for lead, examined caves and excavated without success until sinking a shaft 105 feet deep a mile and a half west of the bluff where they believed they discovered a large deposit of lead.

The county history added, that before moving on, “they filled the shaft with loose earth, brush and stones,” disguising the opening, finally with a large stone. ”It was the intention of two of the engineers to keep their discovery a secret, and after the expiration of their terms of service, return to the scene of their prospective wealth, and thoroughly develop its resources and secure the mines for their future benefit.”

However, these two miners never returned. They were both wounded, one mortally, during the Mexican War (1846-48). The other lost his legs and thinking he was about to die, “imparted to a confidential friend the whereabouts, and also instructed him how to find the mines.”

The 1882 Houston County history said that a few years before its publication (late 1870s?), George Graf, then the owner of the property, was told by “an old gentleman of the early discoveries of the United States engineers and soldiers, and gave explicit directions where to find the concealed shaft. Mr. Graf, in order to satisfy his curiosity, if nothing more, made up his mind to investigate the matter, and upon careful investigation, he found everything as stated by the old gentleman, except the lead.”

That 1832 military visit to Brownsville occurred during the lead-mining boom across the river in Wisconsin. Lead was in demand for manufacturing pipes, paint, pewter and ammunition for firearms for the military. By the 1820s, lead mining was more an inducement for settlement than farming. In the 1820s and 1830s, thousands of miners moved into Wisconsin, first from Missouri, where there had been an earlier boom, and later from Cornwall in southwestern England. In 1829, Wisconsin mining produced 13 million pounds of lead. Lead mining both peaked and then began to decline during the 1840s. But the allure of quick mining profit was present around Brownsville, Minn., three decades later.

The 1882 history states that as early as 1875, William McCormick sunk a shaft 60 feet deep and found about 15 pounds of lead ore. Selecting a location where lightning struck frequently, he began sinking another shaft on March 4, 1877, that went down 100 feet before progress was slowed by water. When the history was published in 1882, there had been $2,000 invested ($27,330 in 2024 dollars) and the shaft was down to 200 feet with work still in progress.

The book also noted that Bernard Graf began prospecting in the winter of 1877 with the first shaft abandoned due to water at 65 feet. The next winter (1878), another shaft proved promising until caving in at 92 feet. Graf, like McCormick, was still actively prospecting at the book’s 1882 publication date. An October 1976 article in the Winona Sunday News said Ben Graf “sank many shafts down to find the lead but the rich vein was never located.”

In the mid-1900s, old-timers linked Chris Gerhard and his ice well/ice pit to the search for lead. While the county history of 1882 discusses both the ice well and the mining operations, it does not connect the two, except both being located in Brownsville Township. If Gerhard found water, early histories assumed he was searching for water. However, could Gerhard have somehow heard the 1832 story about the mine sunk by the soldiers and started prospecting for lead about 15 to 18 years before the owner of that mine property did? It might not appear likely, but nothing about the ice pit seems likely.

The ice pit created two mysteries. Did the ice form in a water well or a mine shaft?  Unless some written revelation – diary, letter – is yet to be discovered, Gerhard’s intentions will never be known. However, the presence of ice and also a cold air opening on his hillside was the most intriguing. That mystery would finally be solved; to be continued…

Sources: 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).