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Oct 26, 2008 10:55 pm US/Central
Finding Minnesota: A Jail You Won't Want To Leave
(WCCO)
It's a great time of year in Minnesota to get out and do some exploring before the wintry weather arrives.
WCCO's Jeanette Trompeter has been exploring some nearby getaways that can provide a mini-vacation without the price or pain of booking plane tickets.
She found a couple B and B's that offer a very unique way of serving up some R and R.
Southern Minnesota's landscape is scattered with quaint small towns. Wykoff is one of those little plots of paradise and offers a very unique getaway. It can be found just on the edge of Main Street. Welcome to the
Wykoff Jail Haus Bed and Breakfast.
"There's two bunk beds in the original jail cell, [a] queen size bed, a modern bath that has been added on, but it's still got the steel bars on the outside, so you still know you're in jail," said Esther Evers of the Wykoff Area Historical Society
The decor of the place is very simple, but it does come with air conditioning, a TV and breakfast. The "breakfast" is actually a voucher to the Gateway Restaurant down the road. Visitors get the whole building to themselves. Guests say there's an ironic sense of escape in holing up and hunkering down in a jail for a night or two.
There's some history to the old building. It dates back to 1913 and the cell inside is an original. So if a person found themselves misbehaving in Wykoff back then, it's exactly where they'd spend the night.
"The railroad went through here, so at first they had a lot of hobos. And then anybody that drank too much usually got put in here overnight until they sobered up," said Evers, who researched the history of the old jail for the Historical Society.
When it no longer served as a jail, the city used it for storage. By the 1980s the brick walls were in sorry condition and the building needed help. One of the guys who stepped up and helped "get 'er done" celebrated his golden wedding anniversary there, and the idea of doing something with the inside was born.
"They spent the night in here. There was the two cells, and then their friends came and they played cards, we had a shivaree for them, so it was really a lot of fun," said Evers.
It opened as a B and B in 1993. The Wykoff Area Historical Society runs it, and the guest book indicates a lot of people like to spend the night in a place where they can imagine bumping into Sheriff Andy Taylor or Barney Fife the next morning.
When visitors make their break from the Wykoff jail, they don't have to travel far to figure out where their next meal may come from. Just up the road another cell awaits in Preston.
The Jail House Inn offers a night behind bars as well, this time in Fillmore County's old lock up.
"It's the old court house, it's the sheriff's quarters where he and his family lived, and the jail," said Jeanne Sather, the Owner and Innkeeper.
The old jailhouse dates back to the 1890s. One of its cellblocks is now the most popular room in the B and B.
"If you are claustrophobic, probably not the room for you." Sather warned.
If that's the case, there are 12 other rooms to choose from. Their jailhouse mystique is more in their history than their current decor. Visitors can choose from the processing room, the "drunk tank," the courtroom or the detention room. All are cozy and comfy, but don't quite offer the theatrics of sleeping in a cell block.
Sather likes to say "Spend a night, maybe not a couple of years."
Visitors can come and go as they please at the B and B's. And they can definitely enjoy the gentle side of small town Minnesota, even behind bars.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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