The Seattle Underground

In the afternoon, feeling sleepy from jetlag and a day of exploring the city, we stopped in for a pick-me-up at one of Seattle's ubiquitous coffee shops before heading to the spot where we would meet our tour group.

I had bought us tickets for one of Seattle's most unique experiences: a guided tour of the city's "secret" underground.

It was June 6, 1889, and Seattle was burning. At the time, the city was a ramshackle den of lawlessness, a wild-west frontier town booming as the port of departure for the Klondike Gold Rush.

In the afternoon, a pot of oil-based glue boiled over in a woodworking shop, igniting the wood that was foolishly stored on-site. An apprentice tried to douse the fire with water, which, of course, only spread the burning oil. An almost comical-chain of events followed, with a turpentine paint factory catching fire, exploding and spreading burning material through the tightly packed wooden buildings and sawdust-covered streets. The city's ill-prepared volunteer fire department was unable to manage the crisis (the fire marshal had taken the day off and was out of town with his wife), and their attempts to detonate several buildings in order to create a fire break only managed to spread the flames further (they had started arguing over who got to blow up the buildings, and by the time they actually detonated their explosives, the buildings were already on fire).

In the end, an astounding 25 city blocks were completely razed to the ground.

The city was rebuilt, of course, but when they built it back, the city planners raised many of the streets more than ten feet higher, and up to twenty-two feet in certain places, to prevent chronic flooding and sewage issues which had plagued Seattle since its founding. Entire streets and city blocks were abandoned underground, and remain there today, accessible now only with a guide.

The tour began with a walk through Seattle's downtown as our excellent guide told jokes and shared stories and interesting facts about the city's storied past and quirky architecture. 

As we walked through Pioneer Square towards the entrance to the underground, we stepped over several portions of sidewalk where irregular pieces of purple glass were imbedded in the concrete, dotting the ground underfoot.

The glass, originally clear, functioned as skylights, naturally illuminating the tunnels below. They turned purple with age due to a reaction between the manganese in the glass to sunlight.

Now, these prisms, in various shades of purple, still dot the city sidewalks in some places, providing traces of uncanny filtered light to the tunnels below.

Mostly, however, our tour relied on the electrical lights which are still installed in the underground.

Eventually, we climbed down a flight of stairs, our guide unlocked a heavy door, and we stepped into the underground beneath Seattle.

While many have tried to resurrect commerce in the tunnels over the decades, the persistent mustiness, lack of airflow, and eerie ambiance doomed most ventures. By the 1970s, the underground had been largely sealed off until it was reopened fairly recently as a historical curiosity. Now, it remains a place of dusty relics, ghost stories, and a bizarre glimpse into Seattle’s shadowy foundations.

After finishing the tour, which led us through tunnels, abandoned rooms, and silent cellars, blending ghost stories with true tales of the city’s bizarre origins, I really felt like this was one of the best ways to experience the quirky weirdness that makes Seattle so unique.

Here are a few of my favorite facts from the tour:

• Seattle’s original toilets flushed with the tide. Before the street elevation project, the city’s plumbing was so bad that high tide would sometimes reverse the flow of waste, causing toilets to erupt with raw sewage!

• Brothels funded the school system. Seattle’s early “seamstresses” were often code for sex workers, and women like infamous crime lord (or crime lady?) and madam Lou Graham (the wealthiest woman in the city around the turn of the century) ran a successful chain of brothels that actually helped bankroll the city by making contributions to schools and civic projects.

• In the late 1800s, Seattle had a reputation for shanghaiing, or the act of drugging or knocking out drunken men and selling them to ships' crews as unwilling sailors. Some legends claim trapdoors in saloons led directly to the underground tunnels, where victims were dragged off to waiting ships at the waterfront. I'm not sure how much of that I believe, but it makes for a good story.

• After it was sealed off and abandoned, the underground became a haven for vermin, especially rats. It got to be so bad that at one point in the 1950s and 60s, local officials offered a bounty for rat tails. This only led teenagers to begin breeding rats for pocket money, ultimately compounding the problem.

• When alcohol was outlawed with the passing of the 18th Amendment in 1919, some of the long-forgotten underground rooms found new life as secret bars and gambling halls. These hidden dens kept Seattle’s wild streak alive through the 20s, complete with jazz, bootleg booze, and hidden entrances.

• Multiple tour guides and visitors have reported seeing the ghost of a woman in a red dress drifting silently through one of the darker tunnels. She is believed to be the spirit of a brothel worker or saloon girl from the late 1800s and is often seen standing in doorways or disappearing around corners, especially near what was once the old gambling rooms.