General Location: NW1/4 NE1/4 SE1/4 sec. 25 T. 89 N R 2 E.
The entrance to Cleveland Park Cave lies at the east end of Cleveland Street just below the stone retaining wall in what was at one time Cleveland Park. We entered the cave in the mid 1960's after digging rubble away from the old mine adit. Immediately inside the the cave opens up to a walking passage with wall five feet apart. Our exploration further was terminated by the discovery that the cave was an active and unsanitary sewage disposal area. After stepping in the muck a close encounter with a skunk would have been a more pleasant experience. We could see for a distance west down the passage and that it continued in much the same fashion only the floor was under water or what ever. When we exited the cave on that only trip in we thoroughly sealed and hid the entrance so that no one else could get into that mess. Apparently many of the old mines in the Dubuque area, once abandoned, became privy holes, after all why dig a privy hole when one has a 40 foot deep mine shaft to utilize!
We had entered the cave in the first place because it was situated to the east of Rising Street Cave and we figured that the two were connected. Later exploration and mapping of Rising Street Cave demonstrated that they were on the same crevice system but not joined. This would mean that Cleveland Park Cave could have been no more than a few hundred feet in length.