Seattle Underground

9/2009: After replacing this box once, it's gone missing again...almost definitely due to indiscretion on the part of finders. This box will not be replaced.

On June 6, 1889, most of Seattle's central business district burned to the ground in the great Seattle Fire.

The decision was made to rebuild the city one to two stories higher than the original street grade, since Pioneer Square had been built on filled-in tidelands and therefore flooded quite often.


Infilling is nothing new in Seattle which basically began life as a very badly-located settlement! Ballast Island, where vessels from ports all over the world dumped their ballast into the bay before loading their holds with timber and other Puget Sound resources, is one of many examples.

There are conflicting stories of this “island's” origins. By one telling, captains were ordered to unload here the rubble carried to give stability to otherwise empty ships. By another account, pioneer wharf owners asked that the ballast be dropped to the side of their pier to protect the piles from wood-eating worms. In any case, a modern core sample taken in the vicinity of the plaque found near the former Ballast Island brings up an international mix of "stuff" including 40,000 tons of earth removed from San Francisco's Telegraph Hill, plus the Hawaiian Islands, Australia and many other ports.

Bill Speidel writes in his pamphlet called “Seattle Underground:

”In the beginning there was mud. Right from the beginning we realized we had to lift ourselves out of the mud to survive. The waste from Henry Yesler’s mill was the first major method of doing this job. The mill putted away for nearly a quarter of a century filling holes before we ever got around to figuring out officially how high was up…so we’ll never know how really bad it was in the beginning.

We worked one nice little racket right from the start, though. We charged the ships that came up from San Francisco for logs and lumber $5 a crack for dumping their ballast off the foot of Washington Street. That was our first real extension of land west of First Avenue South. There’s a lot of Telegraph Hill buried at the foot of Washington Street.

In any case, after the fire several city blocks in the downtown region were enclosed with brick and timber barricades and the pavements between were raised by adding still more dirt and rubble. This left sidewalks and some storefronts as much as 36 feet below street level.

Ok, wait right there!…..Let’s think about that for a moment!

Imagine, if you will, what it would have been like to cross the street from one business to another:Leave front door of business and walk onto sidewalk. Instead of hitting the curb and stepping down a few inches like we do today, a wall 36 feet tall (the equivalent of one or two whole building stories !) confronts you. To get to street level you must climb up the ladder provided (while doing so, imagine you are a woman of the time wearing a long skirt) just to get UP to street level. Whew! Now cross the street…only to be confronted with another drop down to the sidewalk on the other side. Climb down ladder onto other sidewalk. Walk across sidewalk, enter next business. Where’s the saloon, fer crying out loud??!! I need a drink just thinking about it.

Eventually, the building entrances were changed to be what was really the second (in some cases third) floor of the original buildings. Next, the sidewalks were brought up to the new street/building entrance grade levels. Many of the (now modern) sidewalks had glass cubes imbedded in them which can still be seen today in Pioneer Square and which allowed light into the space created below, called the Seattle Underground ever since.

Merchants continued to use the lower floors of their buildings, and pedestrians continued to use the underground sidewalks until 1907 when the City of Seattle condemned the Underground, largely due to fears of bubonic plaque, though it’s interesting to note that was 2 years before a large Exposition was to take place. Perhaps it was really a public relations move?

The Underground and basements of the original buildings were abandoned and started to deteriorate. Some of these spaces were used for storage, and in other cases they became illegal speak easies, gambling halls, flophouses, and other “dives.”

Some say the term “dive” as in “dive bars” actually originates as a term because of the Seattle Underground, perhaps as a result of Prohibition. Hmmm maybe all that ladder climbing might have given some folks some ideas?

In the Seattle Times on August 3, 1964 a reader wrote to the Troubleshooter column asking about “the early-day Seattle store fronts and sidewalks which are still intact” and asked if tours might be available. The answer (provided by William C. Speidel) was that public tours were not conducted at that time and provided a contact address. 300 letters and a “flock of telephone calls in the next two days.” later.. And apparently these folks never stopped calling, some started dropping by his office. And so, about 9 months later Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour came to be http://www.undergroundtour.com/

Find the spot in Seattle shown in the photo below.

There are quite a few things nearby which will interest you here. One probably has a line out front and costs money, but is well worth doing since it shares the name of this letterbox. Spending money is not required to find this letterbox, which can be found at any time, especially with a map of the area.

Urban sneakiness, being observant, and discretion are absolutely required when hunting down this altoid-sized box with handmade stamp and logbook.

No matter which way you ultimately go, one way or another, everything you need is within 3 blocks of here.

Now stand at the tip of the “arrow” you can see in the picture above. Grrr that “thing” is in the way. Anyway, use the “arrow” seen in the picture to “point” your way towards your next destination, heading back past the pergola.

You must now find another pergola with a plaque near it which talks about Ballast Island (pictured.) You’ll discover the Way shares its name with the first name in the official, but longer, name of that 1909 Seattle Exposition.

The plaque itself in the picture is your “Compass Center” (at 75) for the rest of the clues. From the plaque, what you need to find can’t quite be seen from here, but a compass bearing approximately equal to the last two digits of the year in which Prohibition began is a really good place to start. A Main street is also at 90.

Now you must find the building in the picture below.

The shadow knows!! that there is a corner of something just barely visible in the picture ….(grrr there’s another one of those things again!) The shadow also knows that what you seek is exactly on its diagonally opposite corner (but out of view in the picture) and underneath (not underground…hehe) attached with magnets and very well-camo'd.

Finders should make sure they're not tripped up by lazy folks who put the box back Any Ol' Place They Feel Like when reaching below and may need to be patient and check around more than once. Even a wee 6"inches away on stealthy urban boxes might as well be a block away when one only has a moment to grab!

Please remember to be super duper urban sneaky when reaching for box! The stamp for this box went missing in May 2009 (and has been replaced) but the logbook and actual box remained in place. This sounds a LOT like a finder was observed.

And: Please, please, please return the box EXACTLY where the **CLUES INDICATE** no matter where you might have *found* the box.

I have no plans to get back to Seattle any time soon, so status updates on how this ‘box is doing would be super apPREciated.

preboxed
Denver, CO