US News
Published June 9, 2024 at 11:39 pm ET
It’s been years since a network of secret tunnels was discovered beneath Tampa, but their purpose remains a mystery.
The underground passageways beneath Ybor City may have been used to smuggle immigrants, alcohol or even money for the mafia, experts theorized.
“These are pretty substantial,” Dr. Lori Collins of the Center for Digital Heritage at the University of South Florida told News 6.
Up to three abandoned tunnels lie beneath Ybor City in Tampa. Digital Heritage Center at USF Libraries
“I mean, you can stand up and maybe bend over a little bit, depending on your height. But you can certainly travel through them.”
Everything about the tunnels (an estimated two or three in total) remains a mystery that officials are still working to unravel today.
One of the last known access points to the tunnel burned down in 2001, but the city was stunned to discover another in 2018 during a construction project near a former bottling factory.
Taking advantage of the entrance, the researchers dove into the network to try to map the expansive system, and even found a spring inside.
What the tunnels were used for remains a mystery. Investigators discovered a trove of bottles, possible evidence that the tunnels were used to smuggle alcohol during Prohibition. Digital Heritage Center at USF Libraries The last known access point was discovered in 2018 during a construction project near a former bottling factory. Digital Heritage Center at USF Libraries
“When we entered a tunnel, all the way to the end, we knew that a nearby artesian well had been mapped,” Collins told the outlet. “And today we found where it was bubbling inside the actual space of the tunnel.”
They also discovered a trove of bottles, which researchers say could prove that the tunnels were used to smuggle alcohol during Prohibition, a reasonable theory considering the city was once infamously run by the mafia.
Another theory is that the tunnels were used to safely transport money at a time when the city was “lawless,” Rodney Kite-Powell of the Tampa Bay History Center told the outlet.
One of the less interesting theories is that the tunnel served as a sewer. Digital Heritage Center at USF Libraries
The now-burned tunnel once connected the Ybor Cigar Factory, which gave the city its name.
A less interesting theory is that the tunnel is nothing more than a rudimentary sewer system.
“They were probably originally built as sewer tunnels, the first type of proper sewer system, and they are a little smaller,” Kite-Powell explained.
“And then, the one I’ve actually been in: that curious system was abandoned at the end of the 20th century, perhaps in the year 1920.”
Researchers made 3D renderings of the tunnels, but do not yet know their total length, although some theorize that it runs the full 3 miles to the Port of Tampa.
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