The Old Portland Underground, better known locally as the Shanghai tunnels, is a group of passages in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous ...

, United States, mainly underneath the

Old Town Chinatown Old Town Chinatown is the official Chinatown of the Northwest section of Portland, Oregon. The Willamette River forms its eastern boundary, separating it from the Lloyd District and the Kerns and Buckman neighborhoods. It includes the Portland ...

neighborhood and connecting to the main business section. The tunnels connected the

basement A basement or cellar is one or more Storey, floors of a building that are completely or partly below the storey, ground floor. It generally is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the Furnace (house heating), furnace, ...

s of many

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

s and

tavern A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food such as different types of roast meats and cheese, and (mostly historically) where travelers would receive lodging. An inn is a tavern t ...

s to the waterfront of the

Willamette River The Willamette River ( ) is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward b ...

. They were built to move goods from the ships docked on the Willamette to the basement storage areas, allowing businesses to avoid streetcar and train traffic on the streets when delivering their goods. The newspapers of the 19th century document tunnels and secret passages underground. Organized crime was the center of many of these stories. However, many of the more colorful stories claimed for the underground are controversial. Historians have stated that although the tunnels exist and the practice of

shanghaiing Shanghaiing or crimping is the practice of kidnapping people to serve as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence. Those engaged in this form of kidnapping were known as ''crimps''. The related term ''press gang'' ...

was sometimes practiced in Portland, as elsewhere, there is no evidence that the tunnels were used for this."Portland's buried truth"
''The Oregonian'' Helen Jung, 2007, Last accessed November 7, 2008 In his book ''The Oregon Shanghaiers'', Portland historian Barney Blalock traces the notion that the tunnels were used to shanghai sailors to a series of apocryphal stories that appeared in the newspaper ''

The Oregonian ''The Oregonian'' is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 18 ...

'' in 1962, and the subsequent popularity of "Shanghai tunnel" tours that began in the 1970s. He says the tours were popular but misled visitors. In 1990, local businessman

Bill Naito William Sumio Naito (September 16, 1925 – May 8, 1996) was an American businessman, civic leader and philanthropist in Portland, Oregon, U.S. He was an enthusiastic advocate for investment in downtown Portland, both private and public, and ...

was quoted in ''The Oregonian'' as saying that the tunnels are underneath "Northwest Couch, Davis and Everett streets". The "Shanghai tunnels" are referenced many times in ''Grimm''.

References

External links

Cascade Geographic Society
offers tours of the basements near the tunnels. {{coord, 45.524, -122.673, type:landmark_region:US-OR_source:googlemaps_scale:5000_elevation:10, display=title Geography of Portland, Oregon History of Portland, Oregon Northwest Portland, Oregon Old Town Chinatown Underground cities Tourist attractions in Portland, Oregon

See also

References

Further reading

External links