Pendleton, OR - Aug 2006

One of the main tourist attractions in Pendleton was the Underground City tour. During the town's early years, an underground network of tunnels and rooms was built to add storage areas to existing businesses as well as the means to move goods (i.e. gold) from one place to another without the risk of theft. Chinese laborers were used to build this large and impressive underground network that encompassed several large city blocks. The tour began at a street level staircase -- fenced and decorated and locked from casual passerbys. We were led through at least a dozen different rooms -- each one decorated with items indicative of the purpose of the room during the time it was used.

The numerous underground areas were used for many things -- tavern, laundry, bathhouse, bunk room, jail, meat locker, ice cream parlor, gambling den, speak easy, opium den, pool hall, bowling alley, etc. The tour covered at least a dozen different rooms -- each one decked out in a display of what it might have looked like at the time. This room was at one time a tavern.


Since the underground rooms had few sources of light, one method used to illuminate the pitch black darkness was to cut out openings in the overhead sidewalks and then fill in the opening with prism glass. There were still two of these prism glass overhead "windows" intact and they did provide an amazing amount of light. It was fun to watch the people passing overhead -- totally unaware that they were walking across a window. From above, the window looked like a mere cobblestone patch in the sidewalk.