Underground Tunnels
I have some photos for this but nothing you can’t get off the kitsap sun archives. I will have to dig in and post them later- Here’s the script for now.
When did I first hear the rumor of underground tunnels?
I must have been 5 or 6. I went to Naval Avenue Elementary school. The buses were loading out front after school… Yeah that must put me in first grade, before they cut in the bus road in the back. Anyway, As I was getting on the bus I noticed there was a van parked off to the side and kids were getting into the van. How weird, we’re all getting on buses and these kids are getting into a white unmarked van, like the ones my mom told me never to get into?! Talk about stranger danger!
So the next day at recess, I found one of the girls I had seen getting into the van. asked her. What’s with the van? She tells me that there is no bus that can take her home so they have to send a special van. Where do you live? On the base, she says.
What is base? I asked. Imagine trying to explain that concept to a five year old. So she’s trying to explain what the base is to me. “You know, it’s a place for really important people. like my dad. My dad is so important that we have secret tunnels under our house just in case!”
“Just in case…what?”
Her eyes got really big and she started to whisper “The end of the world! If the end of the world comes, we have to go into the tunnels and run away. We practiced it last week.”
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Putting Opsec concerns aside, It’s actually not a secret that there are underground tunnels in Bremerton. Some of them are open to the public. You’ve probably driven through the underground tunnel from the ferry terminal that opens up onto Burwell st, or seen the yard birds going into the old Craven tunnel, heading to work at the shipyard. Fun fact, There used to be a big building there. It was called Craven Center, and park street deadended there, no connection to burwell. Craven center is a big topic on it’s own though, probably deserving of it’s own episode, so for now we will stick to the Craven tunnel.
Craven tunnel was built sometime after WW1 to connect the navy hotel to base. It definitely existed by December of 1952, when I started finding mentions of it in the sun newspaper. In 1963 the navy decides they don’t need the land or the building anymore and sells it to the city. Because they can’t just have people wandering onto base, they block the entrance to the craven tunnel with a concrete slab and close it off completely. And then the tunnel sits for twenty years in plan view, blocked off. Craven Center becomes a community center of sorts, so people are coming and going all the time and there it is, whiling away the years.
A spooky old blocked off tunnel to a secured base? It must have been intriguing and mysterious to whole generations of kids. That’s bound to start rumors!
The tunnel reopened in 1982 after being refurbished. But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Where there’s some, there’s bound to be more. For every tunnel we know about, there are probably more we will never know about. Are there secret emergency tunnels under the base, like the little girl on the playground said?
Well, the short answer is… yes.
The earliest reference I could find to tunnels being dug under bremerton is from 1939 and those tunnels were used for the dry docks at the shipyard. For anyone who is unfamiliar, the dry docks we had in the early 1900’s were the largest in the united states, state of the art and established PSNS as the most capable shipyard in the country. The pumping on drydock number 4 and construction of drydock number 5 involved the installation of a 360 foot tunnel by 1940.
Not really glamorous though, is it? Drydock tunnels probably used for maintenance or pumping water. You know what does sound fascinating though? Giant WW2 air raid tunnels.
For Navy Day in 1945, PSNS opened it’s gates to the public to show off the giant air raid tunnels that they had constructed to protect shipyard workers in case of attack. These tunnels were built directly into the hillside. And since then, the navy has continued to use them for a variety of purposes. In 1954 they were used for Operation Rideout, a cold war atomic bomb drill. At one point they served as a firing range, though most are used for general or document storage. They also hold telephone switchboards and a calibration lab. Josh Farley did a really great article about this for the sun a couple of years ago and it’s worth the read. The tunnels have been rebranded as Building 661 and the folks who work in them are called Tunnel Rats instead of Yard birds.
In WW2 it was common for barrage balloons and gun emplacements with large, surface-to-air weaponry to be installed around town. The balloons were anchored to large concrete blocks but the guns and soldiers operating them had to be protected. Emplacements were often dug into the earth like bunkers, especially here where we have the hilly terrain and cliffsides to support it.
After the war, the balloons were deflated but we often find remnants of their large concrete anchors. The guns were retired and put on display, like the ones at the entrance to illahee state park or the small park at the corner of wheaton and sheridan. But what about the emplacements themselves? it costs money to demo the concrete structures and with the war over, most were abandoned in place.
And on may 13th of 1949 one caught fire at 616 shore dr, in manette. The underground portion was open and empty. Kids used to hang around in them, homeless people used to sleep in them. Most commonly, people used to dump trash in them and that was what caught fire.
I pulled up 616 shore dr on google maps out of curiosity and found that it’s an empty lot. A random empty lot between two houses. I wonder if it’s still under there. I wonder how many are out there, lurking underneath us.
If you want to see what these battlements looked like, there is actually still one remaining that isn’t filled in. It’s in Manchester State park.
https://goo.gl/maps/fdL7mEALGjro7ECD7
Other notable mentions of tunnels I found were references to an original ferry tunnel that someone fled into while trying to escape the cops in 1981, an underground tunnel oil spill that happened at psns in 1987. There were also mentions that 1025 burwell street had an underground tunnel to base when it was built in 1974 for communications lines. It was originally a laborers credit union that had customers on and off base, so they wanted to connect their on and off base branches with direct communications lines. that building is now the police station.
I think the last thing worth talking about is the downtown bremerton buildings. We’re now entering much grayer territory. Everything I’ve talked about up until now is documented in some way, usually from old newspapers. From here on out, it’s all word of mouth and rumors.
So, the original Bremerton is all bought and sold by one guy- william bremer. He sort of builds bremerton from the ground up. He buys the land, he sells the shipyard land to the navy and then town springs up around it. Buildings back then are usually large, brick affairs. Expensive to heat in winter. So what’s an entrepreneur to do?
The answer is, shared basements. There are large, old buildings that are connected on the basement level so they can share a furnace to heat the building and keep the costs down in winter. You can go into one building, go through the connected basement level and then come out in another building. I’d call that an underground tunnel. Most of these stories come from old timers who used to work in the buildings in the 60’s and 70’s. They went exploring when they got bored, or were asked to store things in these cavernous underground spaces. Amy Burnett has talked openly about the large basement level of the building she owned at 4th and pacific, which she often rented out.
Other notable rumors include a possible maintenance tunnel that runs under the water alongside the manette bridge, tunnels that run from under buildings out towards the cliff face and water, or that run underground towards the base, although most of the buildings mentioned in these tales were in the old blocks of downtown that were torn down to make way for the new ferry dock, conference center and fountain parks. Which also makes me wonder- Maybe that’s somehow part of the reason they decided to tear it all down.