Beer Caves / SubTropolis

Missouri has a lot of caves.  As a teenager, I went on a camping trip inside one.  I slept there, found crickets, and got myself profoundly muddy by the end of it.

Not only are there a lot of caves in Missouri, but there are a whole lot of mines too.  St. Louis based companies like Doe Run operate mining operations throughout the ozarks.

Kansas City has 90 percent of the world's underground office space.  10% of the KC area's industrial space is underground.  There is an incredible facility called SubTropolis, 55,000,000 sq ft with roads, rail, and office space.  It is home to the US Postal Service's stamp storage unit, an EPA logistics center, and more.

They even use the space for cool events like something called the, "Groundhog Run"

Radon poisoning aside, underground caverns have a lot of uses.  Many St. Louisans know that our traditional brewing industry was heavily reliant upon the many limestone caves in the St. Louis region.  The Lemp Brewery for instance was built above the Cherokee Caves in order to store beer down there and keep it cool.  Most of that has been filled in by I-55 construction, like caves across the region have, but there are still many examples in the St. Louis area of caves in active use. 

One man in Jefferson County has gotten a lot of attention for the home he built inside an abandoned mine,

Kansas City has managed to make a lot of use out of the natural and built underground legacies in their region.  St. Louis should do the same.  Perhaps St. Louis and Kansas City should work together to make better use of the state's sunken spaces.  Mines for other uses, caves for conservation if possible.

In 2007, I went to a botanical garden on the island of Jeju, in South Korea.  This garden had several lava tubes on its property.  The paths around the garden lead down into these lava tubes and then out again back into the garden,

I admired it because it managed to make a seamless transition between the surface and below ground flora and fauna.  The St. Louis Zoo and the Missouri Botantical Gardens could probably do something similar.  Both will surely expand in the future.  If either happens to take over land with any sort of natural caves, then perhaps the life in those caves could be better showcased. 

The zoo has been transitioning towards local conservation ecology for a while.  Perhaps they could work on programs to perserve endangered species like the Indiana Bat and the Gray Bat.  Bats are important after all.  We can learn from Austin, Texas and their bat bridge.

1.5 million bats live on a single bridge in Austin and manage to eat up to 20,000 lbs. of insects in a single night.  If St. Louis had an army of bats like that, we'd never need to worry about the West Nile Virus, or local pest control budgets.  Bats and purple martins would do just fine.  We'd also attract quite a few tourists.

Washington University and the Danforth Plant Science Center hope to make biofuels from algae into a major industry.  The question remains of just where we would grow the vast amounts of algae needed to make fuels for commercial use.  Perhaps we can use the algae produced in our waste water treatment processes (which does involve some caves btw). 

Professors in Rolla believe that we could fill the vast mines of southern missouri with water and LEDs and grow algae underground.   This would put St. Louis in charge of a state-wide industry.  The algae only needs a specific frequency of light, so the LED's are expected to use less energy than the algal fuels would produce.  We will see how the research for this progresses over time. 

Carthage, Missouri has an underground motel, and despite occasional flooding, there's some potential for further developments in the area known as the Carthage Underground.

St. Gen has an underground winery.  There's a great tradition of storing wine in caves, and there are quite a lot of wineries in the Missouri Rhineland.  Who needs to make a cellar when there are caves and mines all around? 

Meramec Caverns, a major tourist attraction for Missouri, has recently started to install ziplines.  Back in the Civil War era, the caves were used as a saltpeter plant.

Our caves and mines have loads of industrial potential it seems.  We should explore other ideas along these lines.  How can a vast network of caves and mines be useful to economic, and urban development? 

Why don't local St. Louis breweries offer cave tours?

How can we use caves and mines more wisely in conjunction with our drainage and sewer systems?