On my long run the other day, I ran past a historical marker. You know, the ones that are heralded by green or brown signs across the small highways of the United States. The ones most people pass by without a second thought.
In fact, I have run by this plaque several times in the past without stopping. This time, though, I caught the title of the plaque out of the corner of my eye: "Fountain Cave." I find caves fascinating, so I turned off the bike path to give it a look.
Apparently, just downstream from the marker, there used to be a cave with a stream pouring out of it. In its time, it was one of the more famous landmarks along that stretch of the MIssissippi. Back in the early 1800s, it was popular with explorers, several of whom wrote about it in their journals. Travelers and tourists used to stop there on their travels up and down the River. The sculpted sandstone cliffs were said to be beautiful.
It was also the site of the first permanent (meaning, I assume, white, European) structure in St Paul. In the 1830s, a cast-off from Fort Snelling, just upriver, built -- what else -- a saloon there. Later on, there was even a small refugee settlement on site.
Why, then, I wondered, had I never seen or heard of Fountain Cave? I have explored most of the length of both banks of the Mississippi over the past 5 years, and this is just the sort of feature that I would find fascinating. My favorite spot along the river is actually just upriver from the marker: a small slot canyon carved into the sandstone bluffs.
The cave doesn't exist any more: they filled it in to build the highway.
Go figure.
And that made me wonder: what does it say about us as a species that we have historically been so willing to destroy natural wonders for the sake of our own projects? Why were we so willing to flood Glenwoond Canyon for the sake of a reservoir? Why, on a smaller scale, did we fill in a natural wonder of Minnesota for the sake of a highway?
Why do we so often, to quote the song, pave paradise to put up a parking lot?
