Seattle Underground Tour

 Seattle Underground Tour.

Today we took the Seattle underground tour.  It was about an hour tour.  We booked the tour through Bill Speidel's Underground Tours.

But first a little background on the Seattle Underground.

The Seattle Underground is a fascinating network of passageways and basement rooms located beneath the sidewalks of the Pioneer Square neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. This subterranean complex represents the original ground level of the city as it existed in the mid-19th century. Today, it serves as a unique time capsule, offering visitors a glimpse into the city's earliest days and the ambitious, if unusual, solution its leaders devised to overcome the challenges of a burgeoning frontier town built on tidal flats and plagued by flooding and inadequate sanitation .

The Underground's creation was a direct consequence of the Great Seattle Fire on June 6, 1889, which destroyed 31 blocks of the city's mostly wood-built business district. Rather than simply rebuilding at the old grade, city leaders made the pivotal decision to raise the street level by one to two stories. This would alleviate the persistent flooding and, crucially, allow gravity-fed sewers to drain properly into Elliott Bay without backing up at high tide. As new stone and brick buildings rose from the ashes, retaining walls were built, and the streets were filled with mud and gravel, literally burying the old first floors and sidewalks .

For a time, the old sidewalks remained in use, lit by glass prisms set into the new street above to allow daylight into the spaces below. Pedestrians navigated between the two levels using ladders before brick archways and new storefronts were built at the elevated street level, sealing the original ground floors into a dark, forgotten underworld. While some merchants continued to use these lower levels for storage or commercial space for a period, by 1907 the city condemned the Underground due to fears of bubonic plague. Subsequently, these damp, dark spaces were abandoned to decay or were clandestinely used as flophouses, gambling halls, and opium dens, cementing their reputation as a shadowy relic of the past .

The Underground was largely forgotten until 1965, when a local journalist and preservationist named Bill Speidel, recognizing both the historical significance and commercial potential, began offering guided tours. His "Bill Speidel's Underground Tour" was instrumental in saving the Pioneer Square historic district and remains the most well-known way to explore this hidden world. Today, visitors can join 75-minute guided walks through three blocks of restored passageways, viewing old storefronts, remnants of the original sidewalks, and the glass vault lights in the pavement above. The tours are celebrated for their humorous and engaging storytelling, blending historical facts with colorful anecdotes about Seattle's pioneering and sometimes sordid past.

And after the tour a Dirty Martini was in order.

Tour Pictures