Hennepin Island Tunnel - History

History

Hennepin Island was named after explorer, Catholic priest, and Franciscan missionary Louis Hennepin (12 May 1626 – c. 1705). In 1865, entrepreneurs William W. Eastman and John L. Merriam had bought its sister island, Nicollet Island, with the idea of creating a tunnel from Nicollet Island under St. Anthony Falls to provide for-profit spillway services to the many milling and lumber business located upstream of St. Anthony Falls. The tunnel was to be part of a system of waterworks that supported the industries driving Minneapolis' growth. The project was designed to create more industry on Nicollet Island through the waterpower.

St. Anthony Falls are made up of a hard limestone cap over soft sandstone. 10,000 years ago the falls were located near present-day Fort Snelling, Minnesota at the mouth of the glacial River Warren. However, in the succeeding millennia, the river had been washing away the sandstone and undermining the limestone lip of St. Anthony Falls, causing the falls to slowly retreat upriver near its present location.

In 1868, workers began to dig a 2,500-foot (760 m)-long tunnel beneath the riverbed from Nicollet Island downstream under Hennepin Island, exiting below the falls. For the next year, workers dug in the soft sandstone beneath the thin layer of limestone that forms the river's bed. However, by October 1869, water began seeping into the tunnel from above.

On October 5, 1869, the river broke through the thin layer of limestone separating the river's bed from the tunnel. The rushing river scoured the tunnel, caving in parts of Hennepin Island and causing the earth supporting St. Anthony Falls to collapse upstream. There was immediate, serious concern that the riverbed would crumble and reduce St. Anthony Falls to a long set of rapids. One witness remembered,

"Proprietors of stores hastened to the falls, taking their clerks with them; bakers deserted their ovens, lumbermen were ordered from the mills, barbers left their customers unshorn; mechanics dropped their tools; lawyers shut up their books or stopped pleading in the courts; physicians abandoned their offices. Through the streets, hurrying hundreds were seen on their way to the falls."

Work started immediately to plug the tunnel and hundreds of volunteers used timbers and stones. However, the river easily washed these out of the tunnel. Within a few weeks, the plug held and dams were built to divert the river and stop St. Anthony Falls from being washed away. The fix was temporary and the 1870 spring floods tore up some of the new dams and swept away more of Hennepin Island. In addition, the earth support below the Summit flour mill, Moulton's planing mill and a wheat storehouse were undermined and each of these was tipped into the river.

By the fall of 1870, the riverbed and banks were stabilized and a wooden apron capped St. Anthony Falls to stop the upstream progression of the collapsing falls. The apron buried the falls' jagged rocks and large waterfall cataract and tamed the falls' tumbling water.