Quarry Hill, Rochester, MN - Part 2

The main quarry of Quarry Hill Park is considered the "New" quarry, and was used from the 1890s until 1950. There's an older, smaller quarry that was used the decade before that, but these shots are of the larger, new quarry.

Here's my daughter Paige overlooking a portion of it. It is obviously overgrown, but there are trails running through it that you can stroll and explore on. The quarry walls are about fifteen to twenty feet high (that's my best guess.)



Down in the quarry, one of the few remaining structures is this dynamite shack:

Here's a closer shot of the shack. Paige is reading the graffiti inside. Son Zach is playing on the remnants of an outer wall that was built as an added barrier in case the dynamite blew up:

Paige climbing out of the quarry:

There used to be an older bridge here that was called 'Dead Man's Bridge'. If I remember correctly, it didn't have the convenient side railings. It's not a huge drop into the crevice below, but the story is that a former patient once hung himself here on the old bridge, and the spot is supposedly haunted... at least according to those who are prone to believe such things.

The main patient buildings now serve as a prison - The Federal Medical Center, Rochester. Televangelist Jim Bakker was once an inmate, as was Lyndon LaRouche and James Traficant.

Go here for Part 1

Quarry Hill, Rochester MN - Part 1

I grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, and one of my favorite places there has always been Quarry Hill Park. My elementary school often took field trips there, mainly to the nature center, but it was later, when I found out that the quarry the park is named for was once worked by patients of the Rochester State Hospital that I really became fascinated with the grounds.

You can walk along one of its trails and suddenly come across something like this - an old fireplace just sitting out in the open. According to a sign there, this spot used to be a landfill for the hospital, but it was covered over and this fireplace built for patients' social gatherings. I love the row of stones that form the arch-like portion (look closely) - they look so haphazard, like they could fall at any moment.

The patients farmed and quarried the land, and in the 1880's a patient named Thomas Coyne led a team in digging caves in the sandstone to store vegetables they grew. Coyne was an interesting fellow in that he believed that he was Jesus Christ. He also chiseled a verse in the cave walls - the first stanza of an old song called 'Blue-Eyed Mary' - and signed it 'Coyne the Prophet.' The caves were open until 1992, when they closed them off to the public. Here's the entrance to one section:

I recently wrote a short mystery which will appear in a crime anthology later this year called "Blue-Eyed Mary" and this was the inspiration for it.

The cave is in the shape of a horseshoe so that wagons could go in one end, drop off (or load up on) supplies and continue on without having to back up.

There were two other entrances to the cave, but unfortunately, they've been bricked up. I wish they would've simply put gates on like in the photo above, since the bricked up openings look ugly.

On Halloween they used to turn this into a haunted cave and have spooky displays in each of the compartments. I don't think they still do this, but I could be wrong.

I held my camera through the bars to get this shot:

Every once in a while they give tours.

Found this tree growing around an old metal bar:

Here's an entrance to another cave in the park, this one right on the edge of the cemetery where approximately 2,000 patients are buried. They used this cave to store bodies when the ground was too frozen to dig in:

Just to the left of the above entrance is this colorful bit of sandstone. There's graffiti on it, although you can't really make it out. But I love the rusty color.

Go here for Part 2.

Yellowstone - Old Faithful Inn - Up on the Roof

Here are my photos of my trip up onto the roof of Yellowstone's Old Faithful Inn. The general public is not allowed beyond the 3rd floor mezzanine, but the bellhops can take two people with them with they go up to raise or lower the flags. I went up with Edward, the bellhop, who was a really great guy. A woman from France also tagged along.
Anyway, here's our destination (looking up from the 2nd floor deck).

We climbed a dizzying (but really damn cool) set of jungle-gym-like stairs up past the crow's nest (which you can see here) and up to these doors that lead to an outside set of steps that go up to the very top of the Inn. Here's Ed telling me not to go into the light.

Who's this dork up on the roof? Here's a hint: it's not Ed and it's not the nice woman from France.



We were really lucky this day. It had just stopped raining, and so we got to see this nice rainbow while Ed took down one of the flags.

Here's Ed taking down the American flag. I got to help him fold it up, which was neat.



And then, as if I wasn't already having the best time ever, Old Faithful geyser decides to go off, so we stayed on the roof to watch the eruption. The overcast sky made for a rather dramatic shot. The building in the distance is the Old Faithful Lodge, where I worked part of the summer of '91 and the summer of '92.

I hope you enjoyed looking at these. If you have any comments to add, feel free! Thanks for stopping by.

Yellowstone - Old Faithful Inn - Up in the Crow's Nest

More pics of my 2010 trip to Yellowstone thanks to a Minnesota Artists Initiative Grant - this set focusing on the Crow's Nest in the Old Faithful Inn. It's closed to the general public, but the bellhops are allowed to take two people with them when they go up to raise and lower the flags on the roof. I'll post the roof pictures in the next post.
If you want to see my pictures of the Old Faithful Inn fireplace, go here. To see some other details of the Old Faithful Inn's interior, go here.

So this picture is looking up at the Crow's Nest from the 3rd floor mezzanine. A small orchestra used to play up here in the early 1900's while guests danced in the lobby approximately 70-feet below.

Here's a shot from inside the crow's nest. Note the chairs (kind of hard to see, since they blend in with the woodwork). Wouldn't it be cool to hang out up there, having a beer or two and chatting with friends? But not too much beer, because the steps going up to that spot are a bit dizzying.

The bellhop who took me up was named Edward. Here he is explaining how they varnish the woodwork with the blood of ungrateful tourists.

Here's looking out of the crow's nest into the Inn's interior. You can see the 3rd and 2nd floor mezzanines in this shot, as well as the stairs and door to Bat's Alley (if you squint - sorry it's so dark), where the bellhops live.

This is a shot of the back of the crow's nest - not visible to the public, but just as cool as the rest of it.

Hope you enjoyed these. Go here to see my adventure on the Old Faithful Inn's roof!

Midwest Book Awards finalist

Found out this week that Ox Cart Angel is a finalist in two categories (Young Adult fiction and Historical fiction) for the Midwest Book Awards. They're having a shindig on May 9th in Bloomington, MN to announce the winners.

More Yellowstone, Old Faithful Inn pictures

Some more pictures of the Old Faithful Inn from my Minnesota Artist Initiative Grant trip - this time pics of the beautiful interior woodwork. I'm not that good of a photographer, but here are just a few more reasons why I love the Old Faithful Inn.

Here's a photo (on a rather cloudy day) taken of the back of the Inn. The pictures of the interior that follow are all from the main part of the building beneath the flags.

This is the lobby at night. The lights look like candles, but they're electric and always have been, ever since the place was built in 1904.

Here's a close-up of one of the sets of lights. The squiggly lines in the logs are made from some kind of insect or worm that burrowed beneath the bark of the lodgepole pines.

Here are a couple shots of the intricate jungle-gym-like interior:

The balcony looking over the dining room. Note the light sconces on either side, because in the picture after this one I show what is on one of those sconces.

This is what's on the inside of one of the sconces - the names of employees who played on this balcony for the entertainment of the dining room guests in 1924. The opposite sconce lists players from 1926. I tried to find some info about these people in the archives in Gardiner, but came up empty. I of course may have missed something. If anyone knows anything about these folks, let me know!

I got to go up onto the roof with a bellman, and I'll post those pics at a later date.

Thanks for looking!





Yellowstone - Old Faithful Inn Fireplace

I received a Minnesota Artist Initiative Grant in 2010, part of which paid for a research trip to Yellowstone. I took a bunch of pictures, and since they're just sitting on my laptop, I thought I'd share some of them in a few separate posts.

One of my all-time favorite places in the world is the Old Faithful Inn.  Robert Reamer and his team of workers built the Inn in 1904. What follows are some photos of its massive fireplace - 500-tons of rhyolite stacked nearly 80-ft high, it serves as one of the main supports of the roof.

There are actually eight separate fireplaces in this one structure; four large ones (one on each side) and four small ones (one in each corner). Only a few of the main ones are still functional due to the Hebgen earthquake in 1959 which caused the part of it to collapse in on itself.

Here's a bellman stoking the fire in one of the functional ones.

Here's one of the corner fireplaces (which are mainly used for stacking kindling these days.) The plastic spoon was not an original feature.

Some detail:

I believe the hooks and andirons are original.

The fireplace clock's pendulum. Made on site at the same time the inn was built.

The mechanics of the clock.

The view from behind the clock - taken from the 3rd floor mezzanine looking down at some of the writing desks on the 2nd floor mezzanine. - But for some reason, when I add this pic to the blog it comes out sideways. So turn your head to look at it...





Hope you liked the pictures! I'll post some more later.