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Contact Information:
        craig@riponmainst.com

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Ripon Main Street, Inc.
Craig Tebon, Executive Director
127 Jefferson Street, P.O. Box 365
Ripon, WI  54971
Phone #: (920) 748-7466

The Search for Ripon's Mystery Cave

Since early June 2001, Ripon Main Street, Inc. and Wisconsin Speleological Society (WSS) members have been digging under the former Bread Basket Bakery. The WSS launched an investigation on June 4, 2001 where borings revealed a void under the concrete basement floor. One week later, volunteers broke open the floor, creating a four foot opening and began removing debris from "The Pit." (Photo)

The building served as a bakery for more than 40 years until the late 1990s when fire caused heavy damage and forced the Bread Basket Bakery out of business. Prior to the bakery, the building housed numerous butcher shops going back as far as the 1870s. WSS member Karl Ziebert said he heard stories from local old-timers who recall working at the butcher shop and using a seemingly endless hole in the basement to dispose of meat waste products. Ripon historian George Miller said he remembers hearing stories about meat products being thrown into the pit and being washed into Silver Creek, located two blocks north of the building.

Ziebert is among 10 or so WSS members spending their free time removing debris from the hole in hope of "getting to the bottom" of the slave cave rumors in Ripon. What they have found so far looks "like a round well opening that's been filled with sand, rock and coal ash," said Craig Tebon, manager of Ripon's downtown revitalization program. "We are down in what appears to be a 20-foot deep well casing," Ziebert said. Probing rods indicate the hole extends at least another 8-feet down. "We are hoping that when we get down to the bottom, it will open into the long elusive "Ripon Mystery Cave," he said. The pit is approximately 4-feet in diameter, he noted. The north half of the hole is comprised of a hand laid stone wall. The south side is side is a dolomite "cliff" that drops straight to the bottom of the hole. (Photo)

Ripon Main Street and the Wisconsin Speleological Society began the project after hearing stories dating back several generations about underground passages beneath Ripon's downtown business district. As of late 2001, nothing has been found to suggest the opening was part of an underground tunnel for pre-Civil War slaves fleeing north to freedom.

Explorers seek cavern rumored
on underground railroad

Karl Ziebert walked away feeling empty after 12 hours of filling 5-gallon buckets more than 300 times with dirt and coal ash. His hands were filthy, blistering. He had to clear mud and dust from the light on the hard hat. Hidden among quaint gift shops and coffee shops that sell fudge and chocolates is the vacant store where volunteers from Ripon Main Street, Inc. and the Wisconsin Speleological Society are searching for what they believe is a large cavern possibly used for the underground railroad railroad in the 1850s.

Stories of runaway slaves seeking refuge here have circulated for decades. Some call these stories rumors, but there is documented proof that slaves had been hidden in some buildings in Ripon during their escape to Canada. Officials at the Wisconsin Historical Society say it's unlikely slaves were kept underground here, though. The major routes of the railroad, the said, started at the southwest tip of the state and headed to Milwaukee or up the Mississippi River, not into Ripon.

Still, stories of slaves entering the cafe from a tunnel system located west of Ripon kept volunteers digging and local historians hopeful that something proving the stories would be uncovered. "Everyone seems to want to be a part of this exploration," Ziebert said. "It is a story that has been out there for for more than 150 years."

Local historian Franklin B. Farvour, who was born in Ripon in 1919 and has lived here all of this life, has childhood memories of the butcher shop that occupied this building. Farvour said the business used the well to dispose of waste, chucking bones and spoiled meat into the chasm. By the 1960s, the opening was filled with dirt, and a concrete floor covered the entrance. Farvour said it is unlikely that the well would be the only entrance into the cave. Farvour and Ziebert estimate there could be as many as seven access tunnels to the cavern, based on stories -- and somewhat on rumors.

Does Ripon have a tie to the Underground Railroad? The search continues...

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