Anoka’s abandoned amphitheater is a sidewalk width away from the busy traffic on 169. (Photo by Chad Smith)
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 abandoned amphitheater held 1,600 people. (Photo by Chad Smith)
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)
Renovation is usually one of my favorite topics. It involves retrofitting old structures to make them new again. Those assignments involve me talking about and photographing old structures, something the urban explorer in me really enjoys.
The Harmony, Minnesota, Historical Society is kicking off a fund drive to renovate the old McGlaughlin Elevator, first built in 1879. They’ll host open house events July 3 and 4 from 11-2 each day. (Photo by Chad Smith)
The past and future stand guard at the entrance to Main Street in Harmony, Minnesota. The McMichael Grain Elevator was built in 1879 and stands on the west side of Main Street, where it meets the curve of State Highway 52. On the east side of the street is the much newer and more modern Harmony Agri-Services. A group of Harmony citizens is working to make sure the past and future of grain handling in the area watch over Main Street for many years to come.
Harmony sits smack dab in the middle of Minnesota farm country, so they needed elevators near railroads to process and store harvested grain, as well as move it into large freight cars for transportation. The A. & T. McMichael Grain Company of McGregor, Iowa, built the original elevator structure, one of several facilities they owned and operated in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and North and South Dakota. It included the elevators in Preston, Mabel, and Canton, Minnesota.
Farmers drove in here and dumped their grain for storage down through the floor grate in the old Harmony Elevator. The town’s Historical Society is kicking off a fund drive to raise money for renovations and turning it into a historical landmark. (Photo by Chad Smith)
Joel Wolsted bought the facility in 1914, and his family would hang on to it for a long time. He passed on the operation to his son, Ron Wolsted, who ran it as “Harmony Feed and Fuel.” As the new Harmony Agri-Services facility went up on the other side of the road, the old structure was gifted to the City of Harmony and the Harmony Area Historical Society by Jeff and Barb (Wolsted) Soma of Harmony Agri-Services in 2019.
Understandably, the then 140-year-old facility was in rough shape when the historical society first opened the doors. Ralph Beastrom is one of the historical society’s elevator committee chairs. With a laugh, he said the place was “full of stuff” when they looked inside it.
“We had a crew come in and clean the bins,” he recalled. “They went down inside the bins (which are long gone) and shoveled them all out. We also had a soda blaster come in and clean everything up inside the building. There were cobwebs, bird droppings, and dirt everywhere you looked in here.”
One of the leftover shovels that Harmony Elevator employees had to use to unload train cars by hand in the late 1800s when the elevator was built. (Photo by Chad Smith)
The local Falk Foundation gave the project a grant to help pay for the soda blasting. If you don’t know what that is, it’s like sandblasting, but workers use what’s essentially baking soda.
He said there are a few pieces of equipment left behind, including what are called “fanning mills” that sort the grain. Once the mills and other left-behind equipment get cleaned up, they will become part of the historical site.
Machinery left behind at the old elevator in Harmony, Minnesota. The local Historical Society is raising funds to renovate it and make it a historical landmark the town can be proud of. (Photo by Chad Smith)
“Our overall renovation plan is to work on the outside first,” Beastrom said. “We’ll do the siding and fix up the doors, so they work smoothly again. At some point, the inside will get renovated with some new lighting and some interpretive information. Whether we’ll do anything electronically, I’m not sure yet.
“We also need to get the windows taken care of, which will probably be our next high-dollar item,” he said. “Then, it’ll be time to work on the doors and close any openings that the swallows are using to get in and build their nests.”
The Harmony Historical Society is working with a preservationist in Spring Grove to do the work necessary to get the site into the Historical Registry. “We’ve already determined it’s eligible for the Registry, we just need to get the paperwork finished up,” he added. “That should be completed this year. It should open some doors for extra funding to get the renovation work done.
“Preservation architects have already told us the building is solid,” Beastrom added.
Beastrom, who also serves as Treasurer for the Harmony Historical Society, says the goal isn’t necessarily to restore it to the original condition. The goal is to preserve the building and make it look good because it “sits right at the entrance to our Main Street, and we want it to look good in that spot.”
Ralph Beastrom gave me a tour on a very windy and rainy day in Harmony. He’s helping to lead the effort to restore the old McGlaughlin Elevator and make it a historical landmark. (Photo by Chad Smith)
The Harmony Historical Society will host a couple of Open House Events over July third and Fourth from 11 am-2 pm each day. They’ll have the interior on display for the public, including some of the old machines and signage as well. The Open Houses will be a kickoff to a major fundraising push for the renovation project.
“We lost an entire year to COVID-19,” he added. “Nobody could come to meetings or get any work done. We hope that the Fourth of July will really get this project going in the right direction again.”
The total cost of the renvoatioon is estimated at $200,000, so the Historical Society needs help from the public. For more information, you can contact them at hahs@harmonytel.net. Feel free to reach out to the elevator renovation chairs, including Ralph Beastrom, Richard Kiehne, or Vicky Tribon.
Old Brewery exploring was something I couldn’t pass up. Exploring Minnesota took me to the south this weekend, stopping in Mantorville to check out the ruins of the old brewery caves. There isn’t a lot left of the old four-story, sandstone structure, but admittedly there’s more than I thought I’d see. The once-proud structure is losing the battle to Mother Nature, as you may imagine.
The gated entry to the old brewery. As near as I can figure, what’s inside here was the brewhouse, but don’t quote me on that. (Photo by Chad Smith)
There doesn’t seem to be a ton of information on the brewery online. One source who seemed to know what they were doing says what’s leftover is actually the second brewery built in Mantorville. The original brewery appears to have been built in 1858, entirely out of sandstone quarried out of the bluff directly behind where the structure was built.
The Dodge County Brewery reach four stories at its pinnacle and produced upwards of 7,000 beer-filled barrels a year at their peak in the late 1800s. Reports say the brewery was fortunate in avoiding so many of the fires that claimed other early breweries that began in Minnesota around the same time.
If I pegged it right, this was in the inside of the brewhouse. It’s in rough shape. I did NOT stay in there long at all. (Photo by Chad Smith)
Two 40 X 70 caves were used to store the aging beer and keep the barrels ice cold. The brewery ran purely on steam power during its lifetime. Only a shell of the building remains, but there is one cooling room still intact.
Like many of the other Minnesota breweries, when Prohibition rolled around, that pretty much ended the business. There was some bootlegging during the dry years. When Prohibition was repealed, they tried to crank up production again. New owner Otto Schuman took over the brewery and ran it as a pop factory. But it wasn’t to be. Even though the brewery had some of the largest and most advanced technology of any brewery in the state, Schuman shut down the factory for good in 1934.
The only complete cooling/storage cave I could find left. This is where they stored the beer barrels to keep them cold and age them properly before selling the beer to distributors. (Photo by Chad Smith)
The brewery was partly demolished in 1942. The site did contribute a lot of recovered metal to help the effort in World War 2, but that appears to be its last significant contribution.
Not sure just how long these structures will remain standing. Lots of crumbling down.
Be alert and watch where you step out there. This shot is from the hill above the brewhouse. The littered floor is where I first entered the place and wouldn’t want to accidentally fall into that hole. (Photo by Chad Smith)
Love when structures are made out of sandstone. (Photo by Chad Smith)
Hobbies. I’ve never really had much time for them through the course of my life and I’m honestly not sure why as I sit here and write. Too busy trying to make ends meet? Too lazy? The truth, as it is with most everything in life, is probably somewhere in the middle.
Probably shouldn’t be surprised that this was one of the first things I found while walking through the shelter-belt, reliving some old memories. (photo by Chad Smith)
I’ve never really been the adventurous type. Always seemed to want to play it safe and never do anything other people might find unexpected. Then, I moved to the Twin Cities and discovered urban exploring. It’s been a rather eye-opening experience since adding it to my still-growing list of hobbies.
I saw people going to places very few others went to. That spoke to me and I honestly wasn’t sure why at first. Then, as I got a little further into the hobby, it started to dawn on me through the feedback I got mostly through Facebook. “I really enjoy following your explorations,” is something I heard on a regular basis.
This old girl was far and away my favorite old vehicle that I discovered during a Saturday afternoon exploration. (Photo by Chad Smith)
Plus, I got feedback from people I didn’t expect. The City Administrator at Rushford, Minnesota, Tony Chladek, is a busy fella (and does a great job) but he mentioned during a phone call how much he enjoys my urban exploring photography. He said the same thing I get in a lot of feedback; “I really enjoy following you into places not a lot of people go.”
Just how strange IS my brain? The first thing I thought of was a conversation I had about a place we used to like to eat in Watertown, South Dakota. “What was the name of that place that had the old Wagon Wheel out front,” I had asked. “The Wagon Wheel,” came the answer. (Photo by Chad Smith)
The current Secretary of Agriculture in Minnesota, Thom Peterson, is a long-time Facebook friend who also mentioned he likes following my explorations. It was funny how he mentioned it after we’d finished an interview for a newspaper article I was writing.
While going through abandoned places, I find it a lot of fun to try and picture what life must have been like back in the day, all those years ago. How different things must have been three decades ago? And, how similar some things might have been as well.
That’s what hooked me into it. Going places that other people don’t typically get to go. But it’s even more than that. It’s the history behind some of these places that also fascinates me too. Spent an afternoon a while back exploring the Pokegama Sanatorium near Pine City, Minnesota. One of the most interesting things I found there was documentation and medical papers that went back as far as 30 years.
Got a tip from a Facebook friend and fellow urbex (slang for urban exploring) enthusiast about a bunch of abandoned vehicles tucked away in a shelter-belt near the Mazomani Trail that I had recent explored. I sure found a number of vehicles that had been stashed away a long time ago.
Far and away the BIGGEST piece of machinery I found abandoned in the tree line. Thought for a crazy moment I’d found the remains of Optimus Prime. (Photo by Chad Smith)
Man, did walking through a shelter-belt bring back memories of life on the Gerhold Farm. My brother, Travis, and I spent all kinds of time exploring the tree lines around the entire farm. If I remember right, Grandpa John had his own vehicles stashed away among the trees as well.
Talk about some serious nostalgia that made this soon-to-be 50-year-old smile like he was all of fourteen again. Of course, my wife will occasionally say that me and my grown sons can collectively be 14 years old as well. Not sure that’s a compliment?
Hobbies. We all need one or two. If you don’t have one, get one, okay? Hobbies make life more interesting.
Didn’t everyone’s grandparents drive one of these at one point? (Photo by Chad Smith)
Nature always wins in the end, doesn’t she? (Photo by Chad Smith)
What must life have been like when someone was actually sitting behind the wheel? (Photo by Chad Smith)
