A LEGEND OF MINNEAPOLIS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12896, 30 August 1907, Page 7

A LEGEND OF MINNEAPOLIS.

Residents of Minneapolis have juet "been officially informed that they have been living over an immense cavern, and that the city has always been in danger >of falling into it. Moreover, the officials confess that they Bave known about this for five years, and that the secret has been kept as a precaution against panic and probable desertion of the city by its inhabitants. The danger is now over, and, therefore, the facts are disclosed. Five years ago workmen discovered a part of tJio cavern while exoating for a sewer in the heart of the city. Tho matter was reported to the city engineer, who made an investigation that the fact ithat almost the entire city was "built on a orust of earth over a cavern that presumably is greater than the mammoth cave of Kentucky. Various officials were let into tue secret, and! it was agreed that the roof of the cavern must be propped -without public knowledge. Every official who retired informed hie successor, and nobody "breathed a hint of the facts. Meanwhile, all available miscellaneous appropriations were used,., often by "doctoring" the accounts, to buy concrete and pay the cost of erecting supporting pillars underground. The officials were often at their wits' end' to find a wuy to explain the disappearance of public money, but they managed it/ and it appears now that the publio justifies the subterfuges. The city is now safe, tor not only are proper supports in place, but underground streams have been diverted.