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Going Underground |
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| Underground city tours deliver the Pacific Northwest's unvarnished history, from sex and drugs to racism and kidnapping. | |
Story and Photos by John Strieder The word “underground” has a double meaning, and people who operate underground city tours in the Pacific Northwest never miss a chance to point that out. Their tours take guests literally underground into passageways, tunnels, and basements. On the way, they deliver under-the-rug, sordid history. These gritty attractions hearken back to the glory days of tourism, with its storytelling and showmanship. Guides embellish names and dates with anecdotes and gossip, mixing in their own personal stories and tailoring presentations to their own interests. No two tours are the same, which encourages repeat business, even from locals. As Pacific Northwest history is “Wild West” history, many cities have enough stories about brothels, slavery, “crimping,” and opium dens to help enterprising underground tour leaders fulfill the more lurid promise of the name. Underground cities themselves are in shorter supply, but there are enough tours to satisfy a month’s worth of day trips. The seedy side of Portland Beneath the streets of Portland, in Old Town, lie the “Shanghai Tunnels,” a network of interconnected basements and passageways adjacent to the Willamette River. Kidnappers allegedly dragged comatose victims through them to be sold to ship captains and impressed into service on voyages across the Pacific. The practice of shanghaiing (or crimping) was widespread in the late 1800s before steamship technology throttled the market for able-bodied sailors, and Portland was once considered “the Shanghai capital of the world.” Whether limp captives were actually dragged wholesale through the city’s underground, on the other hand, And two perspectives are exactly what I find in Portland one Saturday afternoon. The Shanghai Tunnels host two competing underground tours. I try Portland Walking Tours first, starting at the Visitor Information Center at Pioneer Courthouse Square. I am reminded before the tour even begins that it features a historically accurate perspective, without folklore. Even so, guides are given room to bend, and each has certain areas of specialization. Our guide, Damon Kupper, takes us step by step through the Japanese Memorial (honoring Japanese - Americans who were put in internment camps during World War II), explaining each symbol in depth. We also hear stories about the riverboat madam who floated her business from one river bank to the other to avoid arrest. After discussing Portland’s cultural underground, this tour goes literally underground at Old Town Pizza, where we file through a brick-arched doorway and down the stairs. Most of Portland’s Old Town tunnels have been bricked up or closed off, it turns out. Kupper tells us to turn off our flashlights for spooky effect, but his crimping stories aren’t scary so much as they are sad. When speaking of the Shanghai Tunnels, Portland Walking Tour guides have memorized an acronym to make sure they (and we) remember the five reasons Portland really has its tunnels. F.L.U.M.E.S. stands for “flood control,” “level docks,” “utility tunnels,” “moving goods,” “escape routes,” and “steam tunnels.” Escape? There is no definitive evidence that the tunnels were used for shanghaiing, Kupper says, but he carefully avoids contradicting the legend. “Is it plausible? Yes.” The tour company rates this tour as PG-13, since it focuses on tales of corruption and debauchery. As the Web site says, this tour is a treat “for lovers of all things sinister.” Later that day, I check out the Portland Underground Tour, led by Cascade Geographic Society curator Michael P. Jones. Jones’ tour is a brilliant display of urban legend and spooky effect, but if you want hard facts, be prepared to sift a little for them, and good luck. Jones is a master storyteller. As my sizable group files quickly to stairs leading down, he draws our attention to an iron door with no handles. “It was meant to keep people in,” he intones. He makes periodic reference to ghosts. He doesn’t believe in them himself, he says, but they keep showing up on the tours nonetheless. They don’t thwart any of my photos, as he suggested they might, but then again, I didn’t want to spoil the mood by trying too many. This tour bends and loops through the dusty basement of one full block in Old Town, with holes punched through walls here and there to expose (or suggest) spaces beyond. Along the way, we see reconstructions—or are they the real thing?—of miseries past. We are asked to consider a collection of kidnap victims’ old boots, a small closet allegedly used to break women into prostitution, and windows with iron bars too small to reach through . . . what nefarious purpose could those have served? And the tour includes an opium den, a common feature of underground tours in the Pacific Northwest, but this one is illuminated only by our flashlights. There are five Portland Underground Tours, all offered by appointment only. Essentially, you call Jones and tell him you want the “Heritage Tour,” “Ghost Tour,” “Ethnic History Tour,” “Paranormal Tour” or “Halloween Tour,” and he tells you when to show up. “Every time we give a tour it could be the last time,” he announces to my group. “Don’t take anything for granted.” |
Above: One of Portland’s “Shanghai Tunnels,” underneath Old Town Pizza. Below: Michael P. Jones, curator of Cascade Geographic Society, leads a Portland Underground Tour group into the basements of Old Town.
Above: The home of Pendleton Underground Tours. Below: Mannequin in historic Chinese garb in the “Rock Room” underneath downtown Portland.
Above: Pendleton Underground Tours guide Kristine Taylor prepares a group to enter the Cozy Rooms, a former brothel on the second floor. |
Pendleton passageways The next weekend I drive Interstate 84 along the Columbia River Gorge to Pendleton, in the foothills near the Blue Mountains. Pendleton was one of Oregon’s most bustling cities when Chinese laborers and their white bosses extended the Union Pacific railroad through it in the late 1800s. A four square block section of its downtown contained basements connected with service tunnels. The passageways allowed merchants to haul goods from the nearby Pendleton Underground Tours operates out of two downtown storefronts, where our group gathers on a Saturday afternoon. Pendleton’s population was roughly 15,000 in 1904, guide Kristine Taylor tells us, and it’s roughly the same today. Then, the town was a hot spot for cowboys and other hard-living Westerners, its small acreage teeming with taverns and brothels. Taylor takes the group downstairs to the Shamrock Card Room, then to a more clandestine saloon from the Prohibition era, a secret gambling spot with a trap door for quick exits, a Chinese laundry, and the “Rock Room,” where Chinese laborers once packed themselves in to sleep. Glass panels embedded in the sidewalk let light trickle into passages underneath. The basements are spruced up with period artifacts from above ground and lifelike mannequins in historical garb. A counter for an early-20th century ice cream parlor is set up next to the parlor’s onetime refrigeration cabinet. The parlor’s best customers, Taylor says, were “working girls”—prostitutes. She expresses empathy for the socially isolated women and single mothers who worked in Pendleton’s brothels. The town “didn’t want to see them,” she says, so they would dress to the nines on rare occasions when they did go out, and the parlor was a common destination. They were good tippers, she notes. Chunks of hand-hewn black stone make up the walls of the “Rock Room.” At 80 to 85 pounds, she says, each stone would have weighed about as much as each man working on them. Nearby is a “Chinese jail” with a trap door to foil outsiders. Smoke still stains the walls of the former opium den, set up, she says, to keep its euphoric patrons from wandering upstairs and getting shot. This underground tour goes above ground too, to the second floor of a building where we tour a brothel—the Cozy Rooms. It has been outfitted with furniture that is in some cases much nicer than what the rooms contained back in their business days. Spikes on downtown handrails discouraged cowboys from loitering below the ladies’ windows. |
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Clueless in Seattle For 42 years, Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour at Pioneer Square in Seattle has turned garbage, dust, and darkness into a fascinating look at history, with several tours starting on the hour every day. Speidel, a journalist, started giving tours to boost public support for preserving Pioneer Square and the remnants of old-town Seattle one story below street level. Today, Speidel’s daughter owns the tour company, but its dedication to unvarnished history remains a priority. Lead tour guide Dave Clavey pokes fun at Seattle’s founding fathers, roasting them for the lack of planning that caused them to build the city too close to tide level. Regular flooding and sewage catastrophes could only be resolved by moving street level one story up when the town was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1889. The old sidewalks and storefronts became Seattle’s underground. As a walking tour, this is easily the most picturesque of the bunch, taking us up and down stairs, through a labyrinth of old archways and under the glass-dotted sidewalks of Pioneer Square. Pipes and raw support beans loom overhead, while carefully strewn bedsprings, boards, trash, and rubble add atmosphere. While this tour focuses on human venality and stupidity, it offers, unlike the others, almost nothing in the way of human cruelty. No racism, no sex slaves, no kidnapping; just comparatively benign displays of lust and greed. Nothing much bad happened in these tunnels. However, they are pretty spectacular even without the extra spice. Tourists’ favorite stories, Clavey tells me afterward, are the ones about the brothels. People’s ears perk right up, he says. He notes right away in his presentation that ladies of the evening were reported to the city as “seamstresses.” By using that euphemism the rest of the tour, he talks about the sex trade in a way that might slide over a young child’s head. The Seattle crew also offers two newer tours, an “Underworld Tour” aimed at a 21-and-over crowd, and a Sub Seattle Tour whose brochure promises bus riders “the ‘real’ Seattle most visitors don’t even hear about.” Hot spots in Havre If you’re up near Havre, Montana, a remote railroad town near the Canadian border, be sure to check out “Havre Beneath the Streets.” The attraction commemorates a period when Havre moved into its basements after a huge fire destroyed most of downtown in 1904. However, there were some pre-existing underground enterprises even before the fire (ones best kept out of the public eye) and it was also a place where Chinese laborers could escape persecution. The tour is a historical look at this once rough-and-tumble town, starting at the Sporting Eagle Saloon, a honky-tonk bar that served the finest rotgut whiskey, and including an opium den, the Wah Sing Laundry, Tamale Jim’s restaurant, and of course, a bordello. |
Above: A young tourist photographs some artfully arranged garbage on Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour in Seattle. Below: At the last stop on the Seattle tour, a woman of today contemplates Seattle’s “working girls” of yesteryear
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When You Go Washington Oregon Portland Underground Tours: Starts at Hobo’s Restaurant, 120 NW Third Ave.; 503-622-4798; www.shanghaitunnels.info Pendleton Underground Tours: 37 SW Emigrant; 541-276-0730; 800-226-6398; www.pendletonundergroundtours.com Montana |
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Northwest Travel Magazine November/December 2007 |
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railroad depot without fear of being mugged on the streets in the years before Pendleton had a police force. Downtown basements also gave Chinese laborers space to eat, set up businesses, socialize and sleep. As in many other Western towns on the railroad route, the Chinese were not allowed on Pendleton’s streets after dark, so the basements were their city when the sun went down. 
