Beer Caves
From the Bloomsburg, PA
Press Enterprise comes a story about Beer Caves.
bq. Borough council wants to tear down the old "beer caves," a link to the days when beer was brewed here, and sell the property to a developer.
bq. The caves are a series of tunnels dug into a hillside by Steeb Street, behind the site of the current Danville Ambulance Garage. They date back to the early 1900s, when Henry Voelcker Sr. used them as cold storage for beer made at a brewery there.
and more:
bq. When Prohibition put a damper on the beer business in 1921, Voelcker manufactured pants hangers and rug beaters, and he grew mushrooms in the beer caves. He also started the Coca-Cola Bottling Works in Danville, the account says.
Heh! I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA and there were several breweries there. One of them, Iron City, had their lagering tanks dug into a hillside in back of the brewery. An enterprising person who lived on the top of that hillside was drilling for a new water well and (according to his statement in the newspaper article at the time) "Struck Beer!" It wasn't until the tanks were drained for a periodic maintenance inspection that the errant pipe was discovered.
Posted by DaveH at January 11, 2004 8:42 PM