News

Brewery drive may tap into new funds

By Dennis McCann

Potosi — When the venerable Potosi Brewery celebrated its 150th year last fall, cake was hardly the way to go. In honor of the sesquicentennial a special commemorative beer was brewed, one worthy of wearing the famous brown "Good Old Potosi" label.

Of course, the birthday batch had to be brewed in Iowa and trucked across the Mississippi River for the party, which was a little like using a stunt double for love scenes but in this case was quite unavoidable. The Potosi Brewery, deep in southwestern Wisconsin at the foot of the Great River Road, has been closed now for 30 years and the rubble-filled production facility on Potosi's legendary three-mile main drag, long since looted of equipment, more quickly brings to mind Dresden after the bombing than Potosi before the party

Still, if and when there is another round-numbered birthday, the celebratory lager — or maybe Potosi Porter, or Snake Hollow Pale Ale — may well be brewed right there on Potosi's legendary three-mile main drag, on the very site where immigrant Gabriel Hail began brewing beer in 1852. There is much work to be done and many dollars to be found, but as they approach their second annual Potosi Brewery Banquet on Feb. 3 those behind the uphill effort to breathe new life into the old brewery say at least optimism is brewing.

Caps and coasters

Local stores are filled with Potosi Brewery merchandise caps, shirts, coasters, playing cards, you name it. Tickets for the banquet are selling well and organizers hope to exceed the nearly $80,000 netted in last year's event. Talk of restoring the brewery and filling it with a microbrewery, restaurant, gift shop and, maybe, even a national breweriana museum, still brings out the skeptics, but fewer than two years ago.

And most important, the brewery restoration project recently received a $400,000 challenge grant from the Jeffris Foundation of Janesville, which supports historic preservation projects throughout the state. The grant is contingent on the Potosi Brewery Foundation raising a matching $1.2 million, which spokesmen acknowledge is a daunting figure. In all, the project is estimated at between $3 million and $4 million.

"There's going to be a lot of hard work," said the foundation's Stephen Vogelsberg. "It's nothing that's going to get done overnight, (but) without hesitation, I believe the project is very doable."

Chance for now vitality

And said foundation vice president (and Potosi mayor) Frank Fiorenza, very important. He sees a thriving historic brewery that draws tourists, fills empty storefronts, even moves Potosi toward becoming "a mini Galena."

"I think it means a lot. I think it means the difference between economic vitality and stagnation, quite frankly."

The brewery certainly played that role in the past, though not without some bumps along the way. The original brewery, of native limestone and red brick construction, boasted a huge spring that supplied pure, fresh water and a beer storage cavern that stretched deep into one of the hills that flank Main St. Like most small towns in the lead mining region at that time, Potosi (originally known as Snake Hollow) needed a local brewer to slake the thirsts of typically immigrant miners.

In the early 1880s, poor Hail hanged himself in the engine room of the plant, though whether because of failing business or a failed romance is a matter of debate. In 1886 it was reopened by Adam Schumacher; a young immigrant from Bavaria who had worked for Hail, and the Potosi Brewery remained in the Schumacher family until it finally closed in 1972.

Beer by steamboat

Its role in the life of its community, and later the wider region at the point where Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa come together, was significant. Early in the 1900s, as business expanded beyond community borders ' the brewery had a steamboat named The Potosi to ferry fresh beer to nearby Dubuque. The steamer carried six or eight horse-drawn wagons loaded with beer in addition to up to 100 passengers, though not all beer made it to Dubuque. One important market became the fishing camps along the river; four-gallon "pony" kegs were tossed to fishermen who would row out in boats to retrieve them and return the empties when the steamer went back up river.

The Potosi Brewery, unlike many, outlasted Prohibition by serving near beer, and soda pop, and after the Volstead Act was repealed — trucks were lined up for half a mile along the street waiting for government agents to open the locks at midnight on April 14,1933 continued to grow. At its peak it employed 90 workers and shipped beer under a variety of labels — Holiday, Augsburger, Alpine, Bohemian Club, Garten Brau among them ? throughout the Midwest. But the pressure from megabrewers eventually forced Potosi's closing, as they had so many others.

"The brewery was an important part of the Tri-State area for 120 years," Fiorenza said. "I think it can be again."

And, he said, as bad as the brewery appears at first glance ? and it looks even worse on the inside — the building is structurally sound. Two add-on buildings beyond saving are due for removal in coming weeks, and phase one of the restoration would add a new roof and other stabilization efforts.

Keeping heady company

If plans for restoring and opening the brewery are ambitious, hopes of landing a national museum devoted to brewery memorabilia are 10 times as lofty. Potosi and neighboring Tennyson are perhaps best known today — if they are known at all — as the region's Catfish Capitol, for the whiskered catch from the nearby Mississippi. And when Mayor Fiorenza speaks of community growth, he still adds a sheepish smile when be says, "We're up to 711 now."

Still, there aren't many groups of three that include Milwaukee, St. Louis and, yes, Potosi, which brewery foundation officials say is the list of communities under consideration for the museum being planned by the American Breweriana Association.

In fact, Vogelsberg said, while Milwaukee and St. Louis are best identified with modern large-scale beer-making, Potosi makes far more sense from a historical standpoint, given that all small towns once had such key businesses.

Perhaps surprisingly, while they say Potosi may be a long shot, ARA officials are open to at least hearing Potosi's pitch. Tye Schwalbe, a member of the 3,000-member group's museum planning committee, has talked with foundation members and is planning to tour the old brewery soon. A Wisconsin native, Schwalbe would like to see the museum built in his home state but said Potosi's small size and remote location work against its selection.

Yet, be said, "They've got a lot of good intentions, they've got a lot of key people involved and want to pull this off. Milwaukee has a couple of things up their sleeve, St. Louis has a couple of things up their sleeve (but) obviously Potosi's got it in their plans. They'd like to see a museum in there."

Bob Post, a South Dakota collector who is also involved with the site selection, said that while Potosi was "probably not, in the way we're thinking now," a viable location, the ABA was keeping an open mind. But he acknowledged Potosi more closely fits the model for what old-time brewing represented to a community than either of its big city rivals.

Vogelsberg couldn't agree more.

"Potosi is as much of a household name to these folks," he said, "as Budweiser."

©2003 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel