Underground Chinese Tunnels, Pendleton, Oregon
Pendleton, Oregon, a small town located in a remote area about 200 miles east of Portland, attracts many visitors to take tours of underground “tunnels” in the part of town where Chinese immigrants lived in the late 1890s and early 20th century. The 1910 U.S. Census listed 83 Chinese, almost all men who were laborers, a few cooks and domestics, and several laundrymen. During that period anti-Chinese feelings were strong and the Chinese were often victims of assault, robbery, and even homicide. It was especially dangerous for the Chinese to be in public spaces after sundown.
Did these conditions prompt the Chinese to dig underground tunnels to enable safe after-dark movement from one Chinese-owned business to another, especially for illegal activities like gambling and for businesses such as opium dens and brothels. Tunnels were thought to have concealed entrances through which escape was possible in the event of a police raid. The tunnels were a Chinese community secret until the city began to repair potholes on sidewalks in front of Chinese stores in the 1980s, long after the Chinese occupied these buildings.
For many years popular commercial tours of these tunnels have existed that are promoted as having an “actual historian” as a guide. They are a lucrative source of tourist spending in Pendleton. The photos below do not represent the original condition of the underground tunnels but involve some "prettying-up" by the tour company. Although many other towns in western states are thought to have also had underground tunnels, the physical evidence is weak and none of them have reconstructed an actual underground space as Pendleton has.
https://offbeatoregon.com/H1001e_Pendleton.html
Is There Evidence That Underground Spaces Were Part Of A Tunnel?
Ideas that early Chinese dug tunnels to provide hidden living and working spaces fascinate the general public and are in keeping with the widespread view that the "heathen Chinee" were mysterious or inscrutable. Despite the attraction of underground Chinese tunnels to tourists, Priscilla Wegars, an authority on the archeological study of Chinese communities in the northwest, indicated that she has never found any documentation or substantiation for these rumored "Chinese tunnels." In cities where the Chinese owned buildings, they utilized the basements for storage, as living quarters, or as opium dens. There were interconnecting hallways between adjacent buildings, but these spaces were not part of a larger system that would warrant them being called "tunnels."
There were indeed passageways under the sidewalk for buildings with stores that were once used for delivery access, or to admit light into the basements. The architectural term for these passageways is "sidewalk vaults,” and they can be found in the sidewalks of many towns throughout the West. The passageways underneath them are simply access channels and have no connection with early Chinese residents. The same can be said for the so-called "Chinese tunnels" rumored to exist in Boise and Pocatello, Idaho; Baker City, Oregon; Seattle and Tacoma, Washington; Victoria, BC, and many other places.
These basements were not dug by the Chinese occupants but were created when the building was constructed. The fact or idea that the Chinese used these spaces does not prove the Chinese dug the interconnecting passages between adjacent buildings to create "tunnels." If the Chinese dug tunnels, what did they do with all the earth they had to dig through? How could it be disposed of without anyone noticing. Moreover, with such a small Chinese population of 83 mostly older men at its peak in 1910, it doesn't seem possible they could have constructed any underground tunnel.
https://webpages.uidaho.edu/AACC/research.htm#tunnels
Underground Tunnels in Fresno Chinatown?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1mrGZU5Hpk A local Fresno tv news story about the “underground Chinese tunnels” complete with 'spooky' background music.”
The historic Chinatown in Fresno was approximately six blocks just west of the railroad tracks. In 2007, most of the buildings were gone but Sanborn fire insurance maps from the 1880s show it was once a densely populated area, home to the Chinese laborers who laid Fresno’s foundations, and to successive layers of immigrants from other ethnic groups The area had family-run stores, temples, churches, Chinese and Japanese schools, but also provided hidden spaces under street level for illicit activities of gambling, prostitution, and drinking during Prohibition.
Many business establishments had basements, some of them interconnected. Of those that can still be seen today, some end in bricked-off walls that longtime residents say hide tunnel entrances. Archaeologists believe the tunnels may have been built to provide cool underground storage in a region known for the sweltering summer heat. Although the archaeological study was just beginning in 2007, there appears to be some evidence of underground “linear structures” that could have been tunnels or simply large drainage pipes. Locals believe if Chinatown and its excavated tunnels can be developed for heritage tourism, it could bring some income to an impoverished area.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2007/09/27/secret-tunnels-underneath-fresnos-chinatown-probed-by-archeologists/
Bakersfield Chinese Underground
Napa, CA. Chinese Underground
The evidence in support of underground tunnels is no more compelling in Napa, California, than in other cities with similar stories, leaving one to wonder if they exist mainly in the fantasies many people hold about the Chinese, and the hope by towns that tours of these tunnels would bring financial income to cash strapped towns.
A Napa television station video looked at the possibility that tunnels once existed under the stores in Chinatown.
https://tinyurl.com/y2dkex6d
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