BEHIND THE SCENES

EXPLORING BANGOR’S UNDERGROUND TUNNELS WITH A VINTAGE DRIVER

BY JULIA BAYLY

I KNEW I HAD HUNG on to my great grandmother’s golf club for a reason.

This summer, while researching the story on the Bangor tunnels, I was determined to explore them to get a first hand look. Luckily, I have contacts who have access to several buildings with old tunnels in their basements and they were more than willing to show me around.

In my imagination, I was picturing a twisting network of subterranean passageways accessed by secret cellar trapdoors, possibly littered with artifacts from those who trod them a century ago. Pirate swords, treasure chests, rum casks are just a few of the things I was certain were down there.

Oh, and rats.

I was 100 percent sure rodents the size of small dogs lurked down below, which brings me back to the golf club. It’s the driving iron my great grandmother Jessica McTavish Johnson used when she won the Oregon Golf Championship in the 1920s. I was confident it would make a dandy weapon in the event we came face to face with any hostile, subterranean rodents.

Turns out, there may have been swords, treasure or casks of rum laying around the tunnels. The problem was, the tunnels themselves have long been sealed up. As for the rats, we did not see any in person, but in a few dark, unused basement corners there was plenty of evidence they were around.

In fact, those were some of the largest rat droppings I have ever seen.

In the absence of rats, the most use I got out of the driver was clearing out the impressive cobwebs hanging from the tunnel area ceilings. That and using it to steady myself crawling up and over fallen and broken chunks of concrete to access two tunnel areas that still extend 20 or so feet before dead ending.

I did give serious consideration to using the driver as a club to break through some of the less solid looking bricks. I’m not going to lie — if I had been on a solo expedition I may well have tried it. The sealed-up tunnel entrance that already had a jagged hole near the bottom was very tempting. But I was reminded by my guides that doing so was against city codes protecting historic structures. So, for now what lies beyond remains a mystery.

Even lacking full access to what appears to be a tunnel network, it was not hard to get excited about the passages. Some are cut into solid rock. It had to have been a massive engineering and construction project to dig them with hand tools. Standing in one of the alcoves I could feel the weight of the stone, dirt and concrete street over my head. I pressed my hand to the thick, solid cut stones lining one of the alcove walls. It was cool to my touch and I could only wonder at the men — and possibly women — who worked so hard under Bangor all those years ago.

How many years? And was it dug by hand? No one knows.

Leaving the tunnels and coming back out into daylight, I had so many more questions than when I went down. And we may never know the answers.

But it’s sure fun to let our imaginations run wild. Rats and all.