As Folsom engineers pushed through with a renovation of Sutter Street, they encountered some unlikely obstacles: Two secret underground tunnels steeped in legends of prostitution and alcohol smuggling during Prohibition.
The renovation of the Sutter streetscape started back in the 1960s, said Mike Lawson, the archaeologist on the lookout for historical objects as workers drill through the asphalt.
In February, the project gathered steam once again: Roads are being widened, utilities are being fixed or replaced, parking areas are being redesigned, and the greenery is being spruced up to attract more customers to the historic district.
As engineers looked to the redesign of the city's utilities, they found no documentation on the tunnels – how many there are or where they may be located. So they began looking for the truth behind old tales of underground tunnels around Sutter Street.
R.E.Y. engineer Kelley Butcher learned of the possibility of a tunnel beginning at the Folsom Hotel on Sutter Street, while he was working on the renovation in October.
"So I convinced the hotel owner to let me crawl through the wall and then discovered the brick tunnel," Butcher said.
The 100-foot-long tunnel was used to drain water from the hills above Sutter Street into a lake, and it dates back to 1891.
Its origin is not well documented, but engineers believe that it was originally a bridge over a creek, which was later covered with concrete and turned into a road.
During the '30s, it was extended to connect two establishments, the Folsom Hotel and a pizzeria that was a movie theater from 1915 to 1945.
"At one point, the hotel had a bar at the basement, and it just seems like it's possible that it could be used for alcohol smuggling," said Cindy Baker, 52, a Folsom archaeologist.
Butcher said the tunnel was extended toward the movie theater during the Prohibition era, and he wonders whether it may have been used to transport more than water. But the former theater is 16 feet above the tunnel, he said, making it improbable that a smuggling operation existed there.
"It's hard to say if there was smuggling," Lawson said. "There is no machinery, no empty alcohol crates. There's no evidence to show that it was and no evidence to show that it wasn't. But it does come out where there was a hotel with a bar."
Butcher is careful not to make any assertions on the legends without concrete evidence, but he admits that the added layer of history and intrigue in this project has beguiled him.
"I've crawled down to tons of basements and never found any legends are real. But this tunnel leaves doubt in your mind that it was used for something other than drainage," he said.
Loretta Hettinger, president of the Heritage Preservation League of Folsom, said there are also legends about prostitutes transported through the tunnels from a brothel called Emma's Building to clients at the Folsom Hotel.
Butcher said the brothel was simply too far away to have made use of the tunnel. Still, there are indications that people have been in it. "The access to the Sutter Street tunnel is locked and has been locked for many years," Lawson said. "There is some debris, broken glass, and whatever came down with the water down the creek, but some things are too big for the storm to carry in, like bricks and broken glass."
In June, Butcher was contacted by Richard Gray, 62, a former City Council member and owner of an antique store on Sutter Street. He said there was a sealed tunnel that once opened into Yager's brewery on Sutter Street – and he knows because he sealed it himself.
He was also told by archaeologists some time ago that the hillsides were laced with tunnels, he said. "But that's all hearsay."
"If you listen to people here, there's tunnels all over the place," Butcher said. "But there's nothing out there – in terms of written history – on the tunnels." Residents can only revel in fantasies of what it could have been like in the Folsom of the 1920s and '30s: An underground world of secret speakeasies and vice.
But for engineers, the legends are gaining utilitarian value: To thoroughly renovate Sutter Street, they have to know what is under it.
"We're trying to get as much information as we can on anybody that has history on the street," Butcher said.
Author: Miranda Simon | Source: The Sacramento Bee [August 19, 2010]