Minnesota Historical Society photo
From a 1916 advertisement in the Daily Virginian: “There is hustle and vigor in every ounce of it….[it] has as much right on the table as good bread. Both are nourishing foods. [It] is of pronounced food value predigested itself and containing qualities that are a decided aid to digestion.” Can you guess what is being advertised? Locally-brewed beer! Virginia Beer “has a charm that is all its own,” claimed the brewers. Senator P.R. Vail of Ely, the founder, was so excited about the opening that he distributed kegs and barrels all over Hibbing on Christmas Eve 1906. Local holiday cheer!
Photo from Iron Range Brewing Association: Tower Brewery 1892
The brewery wasn’t the first on the Iron Range—Tower’s Iron Range Brewing had opened in 1892. But in 1905 the Virginia Brewery was a striking architectural feat. It still stands on the south shore of Silver Lake, just across from the water tower. It was constructed of poured concrete, with the central section four stories high. It had electricity, an elevator, its own boilers for heat and power, an ice machine that could produce 25 tons of ice and enough equipment to produce 30,000 barrels of beer a year. It was built by H. Ellenberger & Company of Chicago. In the 1980 document nominating the building for a place on the National Register of Historic Places, it is described as being faced with a “polychromatic red and crème brick veneer….articulated by red pilasters, window hoods, and corbelled cornices and parapets. Each of the four corners of the four-story section boasts an ornamental finial. Openings are covered in a variety of ways, including lintels, segmental and semicircular arches.” It is still a handsome building, though its 100 foot smokestack is now gone.
Even the horse barn had electric light, steam heat, and water for the 18 horses who delivered the brew to Virginia and nearby areas. A rail spur ran right next to the brewery, bringing grain from Winona and Minneapolis. And beer was shipped on that same rail to area “depots” with ice houses in Eveleth, Hibbing, Ely, Biwabik, Bovey, Chisholm and Aurora. The Virginia Brewing Company boasted one of “the world’s most renowned brewers,” August Tiesse, a graduate of the Wahl-Henius Institute in Chicago. And it claimed to make its beer from “the finest water anywhere,” presumably a well on the property and not Silver Lake. Just down the lakeshore to the west was the busy Rainy Lake Sawmill, which used the lake to transport logs.
On the north side of the building at the ground level was a saloon. This wooden part of the building is still there today. It was known for its “hole in the wall,” a copper-lined lavabo (basin with a spigot) from which folks could pour a glass of beer. Wouldn’t it be fun to restore that building and call the saloon the “Hole in the Wall”? Virginia Beer actually made it as far as the Twin Cities in its first few years. By 1915, the brewery employed 60 workers and was known for sponsoring local sports teams. What could go wrong?
Well, a couple of things. The era of World War I brewed some powerful anti-German sentiment and the beer that had been touted as a German Lager was renamed “Old Virginian” to avoid any confusion. The war era also necessitated conservation of resources. Virginia church congregations (along with others across the Range) called for saloons and breweries to close because the whole enterprise used excessive amounts of coal and wheat that could be directed to the war effort. As we know, this evolved into a general temperance campaign. In March of 1918, under Minnesota’s “county option laws,” St. Louis County voted to go dry effective November 29, 1918. The brewery brewed its final batch on that date. And, as we know, Prohibition throughout the U.S. began on January 16, 1920.
Stationery from the Virginia Brewing Company
But Virginia Brewing Company was adaptable. In 1918, they began to produce Bingo, a non-intoxicating beverage, necessitating the construction of a new bottling plant. Apparently that went fairly well, but it wasn’t the booming business the brewery had started out to be. P.R. Vail had died years earlier, and in 1919 Ben Hoyer purchased Vail’s portion and helped the company survive. Its successor, “Virginia Products and Storage Company” produced Orange Crush and other soft drinks in addition to “cereal beverages,” Virginia Dark and Virginia Pale, made of malt and hops and aged in wood. And the saloon became a candy company. In 1927, the brewing equipment was removed and by 1929 the building was vacant. It was sold to George Drieman, a trucker and mover, in 1948 to be used for storage. That has been its fate since as well. But, as J. J. Smith, supervisor of storage warehouses for the Minnesota Railroad and Warehouse Commission, said “It is built like the Rock of Gibraltar---I’ve rarely seen such massive floor construction and such solid masonry walls.” And so it still stands strong.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if it could be resurrected as a brewery again? Why couldn’t it be a brewery that uses Minnesota artisanal grains and Minnesota hops? Lakes & Legends Brewing of Minneapolis is a member of Minnesota Grown and uses local ingredients from the farm in its specialty brews. The Minnesota Hop Growers Association was founded in 2013, encouraging local hops. And in 2016, the Artisan Grain Collaborative was founded near Moorhead to research heritage grains for craft brewing. Vertical Malt in Crookston produces locally grown, specialty malt and customized malt for craft brewers. And Virginia still has that “finest water anywhere” that was used in 1906…..could we do it again?