Exploring the Caves of Rochester, NY

This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published November 15, 2012 and can be found here.

   Just when I think I've done everything there is to do in Rochester, I discover another little hole in the wall. Literally. Check out these photos of what is unofficially known as "Rico Cave" near Lower Falls...

Apparently it's called Rico Cave because there's a rock painted with the Puerto Rican flag outside the entrance. But that's just from what I've read online. If anyone knows more about this, please     leave a comment below    . You can see more photos from     Bobbybeans' Flickr photostream

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Below is a birdseye view of the cave. It's located between Lower Falls and the Driving Park Bridge in the western wall of the gorge.

In the video below, the photographer attempts to show us an opening in the ceiling of the cave. The photographer seems to think this enire chamber may in fact be man made. And I believe him. Look how geometric that tunnel opening is. Very strange...

But Rico Cave isn't the only mysterious chamber we can find in the gorge walls. How many of you have seen the cave (below) in the High Falls rim?

Or this little doorway? Definitely not natural...

Now, I'm not 100% sure about the cave - it may be a channel from the old RG&E hydro power station #4 immediately to the right. But I do believe I've cracked the mystery of the little doorway...

This mechanical drawing of Saint Paul Street and the eastern wall of High Falls gorge shows what's behind the mysterious door. It's actually a Saint Paul Street drainage tunnel! (Click for a larger view)

The drawing is a bit difficult to decipher, but it looks like there may be a second drain tunnel closer to the falls there on the left. Could the cave also be a drain opening? Possibly.

The only way to tell for sure may be to climb up in there and see. But a word of caution to any would-be explorers... check the weather report before you venture inside one of these caves. This past August,     three people had to be rescued

from another of these caves beneath Seth Green Drive. They were on a geocaching expedition when rains came and quickly flooded the tunnel they were exploring.

Rochester's a lot of things. But BORE-ing ain't one. AAH HA HA! Eh.

UPDATE:    The High Falls "mystery door" was, in fact, part of a storm water collection system for the Upper Falls area. It was designed by The Sear-Brown Group, Inc., a local design & engineering firm (now Stantec) in the 1970's. It was soon abandoned however, when it was replaced by the major sewer tunnels that were built by Monroe County's Pure Waters program in the 1980's. One of the designers of the system contacted RocSubway after this article was published. He is searching for some of the old drawings and we'll share them here if they turn up!

UPDATE:    Here are the drawings of that storm water collection system that emptied out into the High Falls basin...

UPDATE:    Bill Putt from Monroe County confirms that this "cave" was actually cut out of the rock and is an old overflow chamber for the west side trunk sewer. It is still semi-active and may direct overflow runoff into the river during storm events.