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Question: Anyone Have Any Info on Tacoma's Mystery Tunnels!?

Anyone Have Any Info on Tacoma's Mystery Tunnels!?
We had them in our backyard, the city had to fill them!. I've read stories that these tunnels led from trap doors in taverns to the waterfront to smuggle drunks off to the docks, but our tunnels led into our basement, where there was a four foot wide opening in the floor!.
Our house had a hollow wall hidden in the ironing closet!.
I guess I have three questions!.
First, have you heard of these!?
Second, do you know anything about them!?
Third, how would I find out the builder of my childhood home!? I know the address!.
Thanks!

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Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
http://www!.thenewstribune!.com/265/story/!.!.!.
By 1907, Tacoma had become a nexus of railroad competition!. The Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads and their subsidiaries coveted a larger piece of the trade action through the City of Destiny!.

But getting goods from ships at sea level and up and out of the geologic bowl surrounding the city posed a problem for the railroads!. Union Pacific’s New York barons floated an idea that newspapers called the “Big Bore!.”

A tunnel with an easy grade!. More than 70 feet deep in places!. A mile-and-a-half long!. Punched through the hillside at South 24th Street and Jefferson Avenue, arcing south then west!. With help from City Hall, the UP bought the sparsely populated swath!.

Digging started from the north portal in April 1909 with more than 300 men working three eight-hour shifts!.

One Tacoma newspaper gushed over the tunnel as an omen of the city’s arrival as a metropolis:

“To realize that the city is rapidly building up by the increase in number of large institutions, by the development of new undertakings of moment calling for the expenditure of immense sums of money is the duty and should be the delight of the people!. The Union Pacific tunnel, constructed at great cost, by contractors of large experience, employing the latest improved machinery and tools, will be the forerunner of numerous and fresh opportunities for labor, adding facilities in the matter of travel and other fields for commercial enterprise and great expansion in the growth and wealth of the city!.”

Not so fast, mister!.

By early June, two test holes bored near the south portal opened up 6-inch streams of water!. By mid-July, the contractor confessed to “draining an immense underground lake” from the north portal that the foreman described as “an underground Lake Superior!.” Despite pumping at full capacity through an 8-inch pipe, one shaft remained nearly full of water!.

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