Map Monday Bonus: Saint Paul’s Sand Rock Tunnel Sewers

Via Dana DeMaster and Than Tibbets’ Twitter conversation, here is a map of a mysterious and unknown subterranean engineering feature in Saint Paul, Minnesota’s weirdest city in some ways. Here is your map. The “sand rock tunnels” are in yellow.

 

[.pdf is here.]

The initial query came from yet another West 7th Street rumor:

It turns out to be true. The explanation is thus:

Here’s an illustration from Teresa Boardman’s blog. That and many more oddities can be found in the links on Twitter.

They say that “s**t flows downhill”, and in Saint Paul that is literally the case.

Bill Lindeke

About Bill Lindeke

Pronouns: he/him

Bill Lindeke has writing blogging about sidewalks and cities since 2005, ever since he read Jane Jacobs. He is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota Geography Department, the Cityscape columnist at Minnpost, and has written multiple books on local urban history. He was born in Minneapolis, but has spent most of his time in St Paul. Check out Twitter @BillLindeke or on Facebook.