Portland Shanghai Tunnels

An interesting piece of Portland history is the Shanghai Tunnels. Back in the day of the somewhat lawless West (a century or so ago, give or take a decade or two), Portland was known as a bad place to have too much fun in the rougher parts of town. There was a network of tunnels connecting lots of the businesses downtown to the waterfront, which is a park now, but at the time was the main cargo/shipping part of town. Many less-than-honorable captains would pay less-than-honorable Portlanders to abduct young men and conscript them into duty as sailors until their ships landed somewhere else. You would be drinking for free with some kind stranger and wake up later on a ship already at sea, having been drugged and then hauled through the tunnels to the waiting ship without anyone above being the wiser. There was lots of trade with China, hence the "Shanghai" tunnels.

That's the story anyway.

Turns out it might not be actually totally true per se. Archeology and historical record-searching is apparently not finding much of the evidence promoted by the outfit making money by taking people through what is left of the supposed tunnels.

There is evidence of some tunnels, although the extent of the network seems to be in dispute. Also, the practice of Shanghaiing sailors was widespread, with San Francisco being the most notorious city, but with Portland certainly playing a part. The main dispute however, is whether the tunnels that may or may not have existed had anything to do with the kidnappings. According to the stories, law enforcement was widely corrupt at that time and was involved in the kidnappings, at the very least by being bribed to look the other way. Why then, would anyone worry about the expense of building and maintaining tunnels when you could just as easily pay off the cops and drag a poor sucker down the street? We're only talking about something like four or five blocks in the middle of the night.

The reason for the Shanghai Tunnel dispute is that most of the research and evidence seems to be in the hands of the Cascade Geographic Society, and they are not sharing. Supposedly, they (mainly a "he", but supposedly with some volunteer help) are withholding everything they have until they can finish a book about the tunnels. There is precious little other evidence available beyond "My Grandpa knew a guy..." or "I used to play in the tunnels before the city closed them." The problem is that the best anyone can do is a story about a story, since anyone with firsthand knowledge is long gone. In addition, most of the portions of the city involved have since been renovated, so most of the tunnels that were supposed to have existed are also long gone.

The Cascade Geographic Society is not helped academically by the fact that they seem to want to push the "haunted" aspect of the existing tunnels. It certainly make it seem like they are more interested in guiding tours than conducting research, although since they aren't giving specifics, who knows?

I for one hope they have a trove of evidence and blow this story wide open. The Shanghai Tunnels (or "Portland Underground") are a very popular story around Portland. Definitive proof of the stories would only heighten the importance of what some believe is an integral part of Portland history. But I'm not holding my breath.

No matter what evidence is ever produced one way or the other, this story is certainly not going anywhere anytime soon.