Life in Rural America Reimagined

The "Galena Grotto" Rehabilitation Project

No, I am not building a public shrine. This grotto will be my own personal space, more "man cave" than shrine, but very much a space for mindfulness and refuge. 

The ancient stones that form the walls of my Galena Grotto happen to be holding up a historic 153-year-old Victorian cottage, built on a double lot that overlooks one of the most consequential rivers in American history. 

A river that has attracted freedom-loving people from pre-historic times. The stones from which our grotto are constructed bear silent witness to the tragic and unnecessary genocide of the First Nations (Native American) people who sanctified the river and its shorelines with their blood in 1832 as they joined their ancestors who had been buried in the nearby Thunderbird Mound (Casper Bluff). 

Witness to this massacre is the stagecoach house, two blocks down the street from our grotto. It which was erected in 1824. 

With the lots of Park Avenue laid out by 1838, the first stones of our grotto were brought in, possibly prior to 1842. Property owner, Dan Stone, might have started construction of the first home, which shows up in the earliest renderings of the town, before he lost the property in public auction to James Spare and S.H. Haines in 1844 for an unpaid lien of $443.25. 

Spare and Haines then assigned the property to "Ichabod W. Thompson, etc," who finished building the first home on the property atop the stones that now form the walls of our grotto. 

In 1853 the property transferred to a single heir, Christopher C. Thompson, for a stately sum of $1,800, possibly due to the fact that the railway would soon have to purchase almost half of the four-lot parcel to lay their tracks. 

Shortly thereafter, with the start of the Civil War in the South, the Town of Galena would soon produce nine generals to lead in the Union Army, including Ulysses S. Grant, who became president of the United States in 1869. 

The Ichabod W. Thompson home, unfortunately, was lost sometime during the Civil War years, and in 1870 the odd-shaped double lot overlooking the train tracks was sold for a mere $300, eventually ending up in the hands of developer, Otis S. Horton, who was likely contracted by Frederick E. Lenhart to build the current Victorian cottage in 1872. 

Lenhart may have only lived in the home for a short time, having sold it for $1000 in 1879 to Michael Boyle. The property transferred title several times before being purchased by Alexander Levins in 1882. 

The Levins' likely built the addition almost immediately upon taking ownership. Their time as stewards of the home extended until 1921, when it was sold to Sarah Hart.