Hubert and Charlotte Rother
Virginia Publishing
By Matt Berkley
St. Louis is a city with a lot to be proud of. We have the tallest monument in the country. The most popular beer in the world flows here. We’re a city steeped in civic pride and rich history. But there’s a history page left unturned for most of us. In their book Lost Caves of St. Louis, Hubert and Charlotte Rother help us realize that only a few feet of stone separates the downtown streets and a series of dark passageways and chambers sealed off from the public.
The Rothers set out to research and explore the history behind the mysterious underground in the 1960s. They descended into the dark, forgotten caverns—many of which were scheduled for demolition at the time—before they were closed by construction crews. The book chronicles that exploration, as well as their historical research of the natural limestone caves that have been used for everything from animal lairs (bones found in one of the caves belonging to an animal were dated to between 20,000 and 1 million years old) to beer storage areas and have held everything from a swimming pool to a mushroom farm, a theater to illegal gambling operations and distilleries. Through incredible photographs, detailed maps and insightful writing, the reader gets a peek beneath the city streets into a time and place almost wholly forgotten.
