abandoned exploration | Field 2 Field

An abandoned amphitheater? Who could resist that?!

Anoka was my next stop on the exploration schedule to check out an old, abandoned amphitheater. With a hat tip to Brendon Maness for the tip, Derrick and I jumped in the car for a quick drive north on 169 and literally almost ran into the amphitheater as it’s a sidewalk away from 169 itself. Bet the traffic noise made for an interesting background to the entertainment folks put on there, back in the day?

My first impression of the amphitheater was an obvious one: this thing has been around a LONG time. The structure was put together back in 1914 on the banks of the Rum River in Anoka. The really interesting part to me is its name: the Windego Park Auditorium and Open-Air Theater. At first, I thought it was Wendigo. Do you know what a Wendigo is? I bet you do if you’re a monster movie buff like me.

The abandoned amphitheater in Anoka, Minnesota, was first built in 1914. (photo by Chad Smith)

The old theater is currently listed in the National Register of Historic Places and had to be a great place to watch a program back then. The location on the bank of the Rum River is beautiful.

Anoka’s citizens back then had a notable interest in outdoor entertainment and recreation. Thaddeus P. Giddings, a promoter of music education who’d been organizing community singalongs in the summer of 1913, took over organizing the programs and entertainment at the amphitheater.

Another gentleman named William Gray Purcell designed the amphitheater, and I thought he did a bang-up job. The stage sits on the flat part of the riverbank, and, as you can see in the pictures, the seats are on the sloping hillside. It had room for an audience of up to 1,600 people in its heyday.

At one time, the seating was covered by a colorful retractable awning system designed to protect patrons from the weather. That had to be a must-have during summertime storms and heat waves, am I right? A curved back wall at one time included a box office, entrance doors, and a projection booth, but that part no longer stands.

The orchestra pit was located at the foot of the bleachers. The stage area was off to the left and was nothing more than a flat part of the riverbank. (Photo by Chad Smith)

The theater was used for amateur plays, historical pageants, and other local community musical or meeting events. However, the theater would only thrive as long as Giddings was on hand. Giddings began spending summers at his music camp located in Michigan, and the amphitheater fell into disuse, with the exception of an occasional gathering.

In 1979, Anne Bronken, a University of Minnesota Landscape Architecture Department student, designed a plan to restore the amphitheater. Community organizers patched the concrete and did some cleanup work. A restoration planned as recently as 2010 didn’t happen. Today, the amphitheater has only its seating and orchestra pit left standing, and both are in a deteriorated state.

The view from the amphitheater. The Rum River is in the background and had to make for a fantastic setting to watch a play or concert. (Photo by Chad Smith)

Here’s a link to my Facebook photo album

Fergus Falls was calling me over the weekend, and that call finally proved irresistible. I’d heard through the grapevine about the ruins of an old dam along the Otter Tail River that collapsed back in the day. Well, I quit listening after the word “ruins” because I already knew I wanted to see “Broken Down Dam Park.”

Here’s a short video tour of the broken dam

Folks in that area built what’s called a hydroelectric gravity dam on the river in 1907. The dam was built out of concrete and powered a plant called the Fergus Falls City Light Station. The station provided power to city residents for just a year before disaster struck.

Approaching the Broken Down Dam (Photo by Chad Smith)

The large concrete dam suddenly collapsed in 1909, and you did not want to be downriver from the massive wall of water that suddenly rushed down the Otter Tail River. Can you image the roar of all that water moving at once?

One part of the Broken Down Dam near Fergus Falls that gives the dam it’s name. (Photo by Chad Smith

The dam broke at 4:20 in the morning on September 24, 1909, and the power of all that water releasing at once broke not one, not two, not three, but FOUR other dams downriver. Atlas Obscura says there were reports that the water was so powerful, it picked up a ten-ton generator and threw it into the river. Thankfully, no one died as a result of what was a catastrophe of immense size.

A wiki article (which I was able to validate in several other web pages) says that engineers made a crucial mistake when they constructed the dam. They didn’t conduct a proper site evaluation and wound up building on top of a spring. While I don’t pretend to understand how a spring can flow separately from a river while occupying the same space, it only took a year for the water pressure to build up along the foundations. The rupture washed out the concrete foundation and undermined the structural integrity of the dam, which then collapsed.

The Broken Down Dam, first built near Fergus Falls in 1907, collapsed to to an engineering error. (Photo by Chad Smith)

The dam broke in the center, and the rushing water first took out the Kirk Dam, which powered the city’s waterworks. The water then took out the Mount Faith Avenue Bridge before sweeping away the Red River Mill Dam and Woolen Mill Dam. Damage to the two mills totaled $15,000, with the damage in today’s economy equivalent to $432,000 in 2020.

Conspiracy theory alert: The Dayton Hollow Dam, five miles southwest of where the dam broke, was saved from destruction. The dam’s owner, Vernon Wright, had enough warning to hustle down there in time to get the floodgates open. The conspiracy? He also was president of the Otter Tail Power Company.

The biggest break in the Broken Down Dam. (Photo by Chad Smith)

The city of Fergus Falls then hired Otter Tail Power to build transmission lines into town. That helped spawn a local rumor, fueled by the newspaper, that Wright deliberately destroyed the city’s dam by secretly distributing quicksilver from a rowboat to undermine it.

Broken Down Dam Park was established in 1949, an 11-acre parcel of land. When the water level on the Otter Tail River is high, the flow can go fast enough between the blocks of the structure to create Class 3 rapids.

Here is the link to my complete photo album from Broken Dam.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=chad.smith.75685&set=a.4467526469974421

Tag: abandoned exploration

Anoka’s abandoned amphitheater

Fergus Falls and a broken dam exploration