Hobby tunneling is

tunnel construction Tunnels are dug in types of materials varying from soft clay to hard rock. The method of tunnel construction depends on such factors as the ground conditions, the ground water conditions, the length and diameter of the tunnel drive, the depth of ...

as a diversion. Usually, hobby tunnelers dig their tunnels by hand, using little equipment, and some can spend years or even decades to achieve any degree of completion. In some cases tunnels have been dug secretly, and only discovered by chance.

Motivations

A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through the surrounding soil or rock for the purpose of transport, passage or communication. Tunnel construction is a sub-discipline of

civil engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

and usually the domain of

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

s and

construction companies Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and co ...

. When civilians dig tunnels it may be for criminal purposes, like smuggling or hiding illegal goods, or gaining unauthorised access to an area. People may also build

escape tunnel An escape tunnel is a form of secret passage used as part of an escape from siege or captivity. In medieval times such tunnels are usually constructed by the builders of castles or palaces who wish to have an escape route if their domain is un ...

s, such as those under the Berlin Wall. Tunneling may be part of the building of underground dwellings. Subterranean construction may be done as an art form, as in the work of Ra Paulette.

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

graphic designer Leanne Wijnsma digs short, shallow tunnels as an art form and for fun. She had dug thirteen by 2015, three at cultural festivals.

Hobby

A few people have dug tunnels as a hobby or for fun, although some have given additional reasons for their activities.

Seymour Cray Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996
) was an American

Harrison Dyar saw digging as a form of exercise. Some hobbyists started out constructing something useful, but continued digging after completion. This was the case with William Lyttle, who started by digging a wine cellar,, Retrieved through Google Books, 6 June 2020. and Michael Altmann, who excavated a cooling cellar for a café. A Swiss contemporary of Altmann named Peter Junker dug in his garden, searching for water, but continued digging after finding some, excavating a tunnel length of . Others maintain that they excavated for a particular purpose, although their tunnelling effort seems out of proportion to the stated purpose. Dyar biographer Marc Epstein thinks it is mainly outsiders that desire a sense of purpose. On Dyar's tunneling for exercise reasons he says that "it’s almost unfathomable, the amount of energy it would take" and that "it still doesn’t add up". Author Will Hunt thinks extensive tunnelling is at least part obsession. Psychiatrist Anton Tölk believes that tunnel digging can be interpreted as a desire to return to the security of the mother's womb, and that as an activity it allows

contemplative In a religious context, the practice of contemplation seeks a direct awareness of the divine which transcends the intellect, often in accordance with prayer or meditation. Etymology The word ''contemplation'' is derived from the Latin word '' ...

satisfaction.

Notable cases

Harrison Dyar

The American entomologist

Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. (February 14, 1866 – January 21, 1929) was an American entomologist. Dyar's Law, a pattern of geometric progression in the growth of insect parts, is named after him. He was also noted for eccentric pursuits which includ ...

constructed a network of tunnels on two occasions, with a length of combined. His first, under his

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

home was accidentally discovered during construction work in 1917, without drawing much attention. It was rediscovered in 1924, when a truck sank through the pavement nearby. The tunnel system led to speculation in the press, not in the least because a lot of German newspapers from the war years of 1917 and 1918 were found in the tunnels. After a few days Dyar came forward as the tunnels' constructor, claiming he had dug them between 1906 and 1916, when he relocated to California. Back in Washington a few years later, Dyar dug out a second set of tunnels under his new home. The network had concrete lined walls, steel staircases and electric lighting. Dyar described hobby tunneling as a kind of exercise for him, saying "some men play golf, I dig tunnels".

Seymour Cray

The American engineer and supercomputer architect

Seymour Cray Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996
) was an American

Lyova Arakelyan

Lyova (or Levon) Arakelyan dug a storage cellar under his house on the edge of

Yerevan Yerevan ( , , hy, Երևան , sometimes spelled Erevan) is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and i ...

in 1985. When completed, he continued to dig and kept at it for some 23 years, constructing an extensive complex of tunnels, rooms and stairs which extended deep into solid rock. Arakelyan stated that he received directions for his work in dreams and visions. The underground spaces were transformed into a museum, called 'Divine Underground', after his death in 2008. Arakelyan never made any money from his tunneling in life, and the museum provides some income for his family.

William Lyttle

Moleman House, De Beauvoir Town (2005) (98091571)

In the mid sixties,

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

civil engineer William Lyttle dug a wine cellar under his Hackney property. Having done so, he said that he had "found a taste for the thing" and kept on digging, for some forty years. Eventually, several tunnels on multiple levels led in all directions, under the property and surrounding grounds, some of them long. After complaints by neighbours, a power supply interruption and a

sinkhole A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are locally also known as ''vrtače'' and shakeholes, and to openi ...

in the pavement, the borough had a survey carried out that revealed the extent of the tunneling. Lyttle was evicted and the tunnels were filled with concrete.

William Schmidt

William "Burro" Schmidt was an American miner who spent 32 years drilling a tunnel through solid

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

. He claimed to be building a shortcut from his mining operation to the smelter. When a new road was constructed, rendering his shortcut obsolete, Schmidt carried on his work regardless. He used simple handtools and occasionally explosives for tunneling, carrying out the debris in a wheelbarrow or on the backs of his two donkeys.

Michael Altmann

Between 1958 and 2008

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n Michael Altmann dug two tunnels of combined. At first, he wanted a cooling cellar for a cafe he was to open, but upon completion he could not get a permit. In 1965 he took over another bar, but kept his digging as a hobby. Altmann would mainly use a pickaxe for digging and occasionally explosives, after passing an explosives handling examination at the fire department. He dug a second tunnel branching off from the first one, using a tunnel boring machine he designed and built himself. In 1962, he installed steel doors on the tunnel system and added a store of emergency rations, with the intention of making it usable as a nuclear bunker. In 2008 Altmann reached a block of granite and, considering his age, gave up tunnel digging.

Baldassare Forestiere

In 1904 Sicilian immigrant Baldassare Forestiere bought a plot of land in

Fresno Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...

for

horticulture Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...

. The

hardpan In soil science, agriculture and gardening, hardpan or soil pan is a dense layer of soil, usually found below the uppermost topsoil layer. There are different types of hardpan, all sharing the general characteristic of being a distinct soil layer ...

soil however, was unsuited for the fruit trees he intended to plant. While working elsewhere Forestiere dug a maze of underground and below ground spaces to escape the summer heat of the

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...

. He opened up ceilings to let in light and below he planted the fruit trees he wanted in the first place. The complex consists of bedrooms, living spaces, patios, a fish pond and hallways. After his death in 1946 some of the land was sold off and some tunnels filled in, but currently about have been saved. It is known as the

Forestiere Underground Gardens The Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno, California are a series of subterranean structures built by Baldassare Forestiere, an immigrant from Sicily, over a period of 40 years from 1906 to his death in 1946. The gardens are operated by member ...

and has a listing in the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

Glen Havens

Glen Havens of

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United State ...

, US constructed a maze of tunnels and caverns under his house.Thomas Baumann's Kensington-Talmadge 1910–1985
book review in the ''San Diego Reader'', 16 May 1985'. Havens started out in 1949, enlarging his barbecue pit, but ended up digging roughly of tunnels and underground rooms. Havens enlisted the help of his son and other children in the neighbourhood, who earned pocket money in the process.Caves are not for claustrophobics
''San Diego Uptown News'', 17 January 2014. The underground complex was large enough to hold his daughter's wedding reception in 1960, with some 200 guests attending. Havens ignored building regulations and never got any permit. Local authorities recommended that people not to go inside, but took no further action. A local restaurant is named the "Haven Pizzeria" in Havens' honor.

John Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland

Welbeck Abbey - Picture Gallery by George Washington Wilson (died 1893)

The 5th Duke of Portland is known to have been a hobby tunneler, although he did no digging himself but rather had workmen build his tunnels. An extensive network of underground spaces was constructed at his

Welbeck Abbey Welbeck Abbey in the Dukeries in North Nottinghamshire was the site of a monastery belonging to the Premonstratensian order in England and after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a country house residence of the Dukes of Portland. It is o ...

estate in the 19th century, with a total length of around .Eatwell, Piu (2015); ''The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse: An Extraordinary Edwardian Case of Deception and Intrigue'', New York. Retrieved throug
Google Books
6 June 2020. It included hallways, a ballroom, a billiards room, a library and a tunnel from the mansion to the riding house, wide enough for several people to walk in side by side. Some of the spaces were lit by

lightwell In architecture, a lightwell,light well, light-well sky-well,skywell, sky well or air shaft is an unroofed or roofed external space provided within the volume of a large building to allow light and air to reach what would otherwise be a dark or ...

s and at night by

gas lighting Gas lighting is the production of artificial light from combustion of a gaseous fuel, such as hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, propane, butane, acetylene, ethylene, coal gas (town gas) or natural gas. The light is produced either directly ...

. Most of the spaces that are known as 'underground' are, more correctly, 'below ground', constructed in a

cut-and-cover A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

technique. Few of the tunnels and rooms were ever used for their intended purpose. Towards the end of his life, the Duke lived as a recluse and very few people got to see him. Spaces that were intended for social gatherings, such as the ballroom, were never used. But the Duke did frequently use the tunnels that allowed him to move about his property mostly unseen.

Others

Costa Rican miner Manuel Barrantes has built an underground family house, consisting of hallways, bedrooms, conference rooms and a bathroom. The complex, totalling , is used as a home and a museum. In

Butler, Pennsylvania Butler is a city and the county seat of Butler County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located north of Pittsburgh and is part of the Greater Pittsburgh region. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 13,502. History Butler was n ...

, US man Ron Heist created a 50-room dwelling made of salvaged materials from abandoned places in the vicinity. It includes several tunnels Heist dug out and reinforced himself. A documentary film was made about him, entitled ''Mole Man''. In 1984 Russian Leonid Murlyanchik had the plan of digging a tunnel towards the house of his beloved Ekaterina. However, after Ekaterina's son objected to the liaison, he changed his intention into building a subway system for his home city of

Lebedyan Lebedyan (russian: Лебедя́нь) is a town and the administrative center of Lebedyansky District in Lipetsk Oblast, Russia, located on the upper Don River, northwest of Lipetsk, the administrative center of the oblast. Population: Histo ...

. For 27 years Murlyanchik spent most of his hours, and his pension money, on the project. At his death in 2011 he had completed of tunnel, which was subsequently closed off. In late 2003

steeplejack A steeplejack is a craftsman who scales buildings, chimneys, and church steeples to carry out repairs or maintenance. Steeplejacks erect ladders on church spires, industrial chimneys, cooling towers, bell towers, clock towers, or any other hi ...

and television personality

Fred Dibnah Frederick Travis Dibnah, (29 April 1938 – 6 November 2004) was an English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering, who described himself as a "backstreet mechanic". When Dibnah w ...

began to dig a replica coal mine in the back garden of his home. Using traditional shaft-sinking techniques and the labour of mining friends Alf Molyneux and Jimmy Crooks, the shaft was sunk to a depth of 20 feet (6.1 m) and lined with brick. The work had been undertaken without planning permission, and, when the council eventually found out what was happening, they insisted he apply for planning permission. Dibnah died in 2004. In 2015 a tunnel was discovered in a

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

park. After a few days of speculations in media, the use as a terrorist hideout being among them, young construction worker Elton McDonald came forward as its builder. Asked for the purpose of his digging, he answered "Honestly, I loved it so much. I don't know why I loved it". YouTube personality and inventor

Colin Furze Colin Peter Furze (born 14 October 1979) is a British YouTube personality, stuntman, inventor, and filmmaker from Stamford, Lincolnshire, England. Furze left school to become a plumber, a trade which he pursued until joining the Sky1 programme ...

has constructed an underground bunker and tunnel system under his home and workshop in Stamford, Lincolnshire, initially in 2015 as part of a promotion for Sky television's ''

You, Me and the Apocalypse ''You, Me and the Apocalypse'' (working title ''Apocalypse Slough'') is a British-American comedy-drama miniseries. The series was green-lit on 8 January 2015. It debuted on Sky 1 on 30 September 2015 and on NBC on 28 January 2016. Sky 1 said ...

'' series. The construction process is detailed in a multi-part YouTube video series which has received millions of views.

Press coverage

Several

urban legend An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...

s or even hoaxes involving private tunnels have appeared in media. One such a story is about an Irishman who dug a tunnel from his bedroom to his local

pub A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...

, without his wife noticing. In one version of the story, that did the rounds at least between 2014 and 2018, the tunneler is said to have used a spoon for digging. When a tunnel in Calgary was discovered in 2016, a local newspaper ran a do it yourself tunneling manual as a story.How did he do it? Building a backyard tunnel is no easy task
''Calgary Herald'', 12 April 2016. The 1997 novel '' The Underground Man'' is loosely based on the life and tunneling of the 5th Duke of Portland.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Glen Havens' tunnels on YouTube
in a program by local television station KNSD. * I
GoogleMaps
a string of lightwells betrays the presence of a tunnel on the Welbeck Abbey estate. Patterns like these can be seen around the manor as well. * British

YouTuber A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006. Influence Influe ...

shows how he built a tunnel i
DIGGING A SECRET TUNNEL part 3
Tunnel construction Hobbies