Camp Coldwater Zombies
Camp Coldwater Spring with spring house and reservoir, circa 1900.
The abandoned Bureau of Mines buildings around Coldwater Spring have been attracting graffiti artists copper thieves and crack heads, ever since the federal government shut them down in 1995. The Twin Cities office of the National Park Service budgeted $3.5-million to remove the blue tiled, Soviet styled buildings and restore the 27-acre property to a native oak savanna. Funding for the project was cut out of the federal stimulus package last summer. I don’t know how they ever found it in there, but they did and they decided to yank it out. According to the usual round up of unreliable sources the federal government has spent what it would cost to tear down the buildings on security over the past fourteen years or so. In theory the old buildings get checked daily, I know broken windows get boarded up from time to time, but I’ve never seen any security down there.
Camp Coldwater has a rich recent history. The land is considered sacred and there is a small federally unrecognized tribe that cares for the area and advocates for it’s return to the decendants of it’s original inhabitants. There have been countless articles written, websites put up and books published about the occupation of the area by Earth First and the Mendota Mdewakanton during the Highway 55-Crosstown construction project. A quick google search will give you some idea of the goings on.
I’m not sure how the tribe or the “authorities” would feel about using the are for a Zombie movie. I can’t believe that a slightly exploitive film could make matters any worse. The Bureau of Mines buildings and the spring could provide a bit of a story line in and of themselves. A strange virus is discovered deep underground and brought to the bureau for study. Little did the unsuspecting researchers know that their doom lay in the test tubes. Native Americans gather outside the building to protest the violation of their sacred land. They’ve warned the scientists about tinkering with the workings of the universe or maybe they’ve cursed the researchers for violating their sacred spring and the results are predictable. The spring flows blood and the zombies take over the research facility. Civilization crumbles and the only hope for humanity is the fervent prayers of the Mdewakanton to the local spring god. It really could be quite the epic. Fort Snelling is just around the corner in case the producers wanted to provide a little historical context. The first zombies to crawl out of the ground would be early settlers or the Indians who perished in the fort’s internment camps after the Souix uprising.
I really can’t think of a better way to demolish the buildings. Imagine the final sequence! The last fighter plane at the Air National Guard base on the other side of Highway 55 has just enough fuels to clear the runway. Screaming Zombies clutch at the landing gear and fall off one by one into the river below. The plane swoops around and let’s loose a barage of anti-zombie cluster bombs on the Bureau of Mines Research Center. A few brave souls are seen scampering away.The camera zooms in on a Native American medicine man and his attractive white female companion. Just when you think they’re going to make it a zombie sneaks up behind the medicine man and rips his throat out. The fighter pilot who bailed out of his plane just before it ran out of fuel and crashed into the river bluff, appears and shoots the Zombie dead. The attractive female and him walk off into the sunset. The camera pans out and then zooms back in on a group of zombies gathered around the medicine man. He slowly gets up and raises his hands to the sky. The Zombies have found their king.
Actually I think some of the goings on down there after dark are at least as terrifying as the first Dawn of the Dead movie. I can’t believe those buildings are still standing. Then again, many of the beautiful buildings around the Fort Snelling’s soccer fields and golf course have been empty for over fifty years. It took the city a long time to realize the potential of place like the Milling District. I wonder when somebody will dream up a future and come up with the funds for Fort Snelling and Camp Coldwater.
