Portland Underground or Shanghai Tunnels

Location:120 NW Third Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97209

The "Portland Underground" tunnels,also  known as the "Shanghai Tunnels", were basements of buildings that connected to other buildings through brick and stone archways that were intersected with tunnels that connected under the streets, linking block to block. These "catacombs" or "tombs", as they were sometimes called, created a unique network of passages and thoroughfares that were used by unscrupulous individuals called "shanghaiiers" or "crimps", in addition to "white slavers" who grabbed women and sold them into prostitution.



Women, in early Portland's history, had to  be cautious when venturing into certain  areas of the city. They were warned not to go to dances and to stay out of restaurants, saloons, and other establishments of the evening. Women just seemed to vanish and were never heard from again.

 It was for this reason that Portland was considered the most "dangerous port in the world" because of the "Shanghaiing Trade" that existed. Stopping for a drink in such notorious establishments as Erickson's Saloon, the Snug Harbor Saloon, and the Valhalla Saloon, people became unsuspecting victims who found themselves beneath the streets in tunnels and being carried out to the waterfront and sold for "blood money". Portland, Oregon, the Victorian-refined "City of Roses" along the Willamette River, earned the reputation of being the "Shanghai Capital of the World" because of the uncontrolled shanghaiing of unsuspecting men.

Shanghaiing was an illegal maritime practice where able-bodied men --- sailors, loggers, cowboys, sheepherders, ranch hands, construction workers, and vagabonds, in addition to other hard workers who were either employed or who frequented the waterfront, were grabbed or kidnapped and sold to sea captains who forced them to work aboard their ships for no pay. Portland was unique because trap doors (known as "deadfalls") were used to drop the unsuspecting victims into the "Portland Underground", where they were forcibly held in cells until the ship was ready to set sail.  A sea captain who needed additional men to fill his crew notified the shanghaiiers that he was ready to set sail in the early-morning hours, and would purchase the men for $50 to $55 a head. "Knock-out drops" were then slipped into the confined victim¹s food or water. Unconscious, they were then taken through a network of tunnels that "snaked" their way under the city all the way to the waterfront. They were placed aboard ships and didn't awake until many hours later, after they had "crossed the bar" into the Pacific Ocean. It took many of these men as long as two full voyages --- that's six years --- to get back to Portland. 

 If you would like to experience the Shanghai Tunnels you can take a Portland Underground Tour. The tours take approximately an hour and a half, and participants are with a guide at all times. The tour-goers receive an above-ground orientation, and then the guide will lead participants into the "Portland Underground", where they  receive the majority of the historical and oral history about this infamous maritime practice that gave Portland a notorious reputation throughout the world. On these tours you will see a segment of the once-hidden world of shanghaiing. You will venture into the "Portland Underground" to see remnants of this shocking maritime history --- unique architecture, underground holding cells, a "deadfall" trapdoor, unearthed artifacts of this terrible, misguided labor practice, and more.