The sewers under the streets of St. Louis go largely unnoticed—except when something goes horribly wrong. Those same sewers have shaped the history of St. Louis in ways far more influential than simply making the city healthier by safely removing waste from homes and businesses. As I wrote last week, the Mill Creek Sewer drained the flat land through the heart of the city, allowing for the building of massive railyards that still split St. Louis into north and south. I would argue that if not for the sewer forming that division through the urban core, the history of our city might be different.
The “prehistory” of the Mill Creek Sewer begins, of course, with the end of Chouteau’s Pond, which had been created by damming Mill Creek in the 18th century. It was famously blamed—most likely erroneously—for the 1849 cholera epidemic and had become polluted from the dense urban environment that had grown around the pond and creek. Also, death records show that more than a few people had accidentally drowned in Chouteau’s Pond. It was far from idyllic in the first decades of the 19th century.
Documentation of the sewer’s construction begins before the Civil War. The 1852 Edward Schultse Map shows how Chouteau’s Pond was beginning to be hemmed in by streets and development after it had been condemned following the cholera epidemic; its northern border was Clark Street and its eastern border was 8th Street. It wandered to the west and south, following the natural lay of the land. But the sewer and Mill Creek actually followed a wandering course from the pond southeast to the Mississippi River and emptied out south of Chouteau Avenue.
Major construction began in earnest in the late 1850s. The Globe-Democrat reported on August 10, 1859, an appropriation of $20,000 for the Chouteau Avenue and Mill Creek; the newspaper reported an additional $15,000 to complete the Mill Creek Sewer on July 12, 1862. But additional construction on what would be called the South Mill Creek Sewer District No. 12 (the city’s sewer system is still divided into “trunks” with smaller lines branching off from major lines) began February 18, 1868, following the passage of Ordinance No. 249. Charles Gottschalk, who had once been a partner in the Bavarian Brewery with Eberhard Anheuser, was now working in public service for St. Louis, and he organized the creation of the new district between 14th and 16th streets. The construction firm of Patrick and John Sheehan had just completed the portion from 10th to 12th streets, according to a Westliche Post article published March 12, 1868.
Construction continued with yet another $25,850, reported the Westliche Post on July 17, 1869, showing the massive capital expenditures the city was spending to complete the Mill Creek Sewer. There was also a considerable inconvenience for residents and businesses during the building of the sewer, as a maze of pipes and other conduits crisscrossed the densely packed blocks south of downtown. On September 10, 1869, water lines were cut off for sewer construction around 5th Street, reported the Globe-Democrat. Willis R. Pritchard, superintendent of waterworks, warned citizens south of Chouteau Avenue—which included a large number of breweries—that they would be without water. It must have been a substantial infrastructural investment. But finally, on November 11, 1872, the Westliche Post reported that 4,333 feet of the main sewer line had been completed at a cost of $153,265.43 with a further $70,151.66 needed to complete the final 400 feet. The sewer, when completed, then proceeded to do its work silently and without trouble.
At 4:25 p.m. on July 26, 1892, the Mill Creek Sewer reminded the citizens of St. Louis of its presence in dramatic fashion. An explosion ripped a giant gash in the streets south of downtown, blasting the limestone blocks of the arched sewer roof into the sky as sewer gas trapped underground ignited. A section of sewer 1,000 feet long was blown open, exposing the subterranean channel dozens of feet below street level.
Two men and one woman were killed, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the next day that it was a miracle that hundreds did not perish. The Iron Mountain Railroad, whose tracks ran south out of the city through Carondelet, maintained a passenger and freight depot near the end of the blast area, and a train was scheduled to pass by just after the explosion. The dead were a customer of a bar at 1014 South 4th Street, John Fuchs, and the bartender who was serving him, Charles Miller. A woman who lived above the bar, Mrs. John Timpe, died when the explosion destroyed the building. Her two children survived with minor injuries.
Ironically, the very reason the Mill Creek Sewer was built—to eliminate the open dumping of waste from factories, tanneries, and slaughterhouses—did not solve the inherent problem of volatile pollution. Suspicion quickly turned to the Waters Pierce oil fire the previous week, which had spilled petroleum into the sewer. There was also probably a natural buildup of hydrogen sulfide (from the decomposition of waste, commonly known as sewer gas) present in the tunnel that acted as an accelerant. Due to high water in the Mississippi River, the oil, which is lighter than water, was stuck in the tunnel since the mouth of Mill Creek Sewer was blocked. The Sewer Commissioner defended his inaction, stating there was little he could have done to remove the oil from the sewer, except to pump it into another sewer. One can see now why urban planners in the 20th century were so keen to remove industry from downtown St. Louis.
By the early 20th century, the Mill Creek Sewer needed updating to meet the increased rainwater runoff from the growth of the city further to the west. Tunneling was expensive, and the price had increased greatly since the 19th century; the Post-Dispatch reported on August 20, 1916, that the Board of Public Service needed another $1,500,000 in addition to the previous $3,500,000 already allocated for construction. William Connett ran against Mayor Henry Kiel in 1917 on a platform attacking what he felt were cost overruns on the project. Connett lost, and Kiel would serve as mayor until 1925.
Today, the Mill Creek Sewer has been largely forgotten, with no explosions or flooding having occurred in recent memory. The underground channel empties out into the Mississippi River along a deserted section of the riverfront south of the Arch. Chouteau’s Pond is long gone, though every so often a developer makes another plan to resurrect that drained body of water. But even if hardly anyone knows of its existence, the Mill Creek Sewer continues to influence the history of St. Louis, right in the middle of the city.
