The Seattle Underground & Bertha

So you know Seattle's building a subway and extending highways and roads. Surrounded by water and unstable groundwater, it's a huge painful project 'Milepost 31'. But there's behemoth Bertha. Tunneling through with ferocity. However, Bertha has been stopped in its tracks due to 'The Object', something so mysteriously obscured by groundwater that the crew couldn't see what's blocking it. (News and details here, here, here and here.) 

I love everything underground. Catacombs, vaults and whatever. If a city has it, you can be sure I'll go. Now I'm all burning curious about 'The Object'. Thinking X-Files. I'll probably go re-watch some episodes. We visited the Seattle Underground- a network of underground passageways and basements downtown where it was the original city in the mid 19th century before they elevated the streets surrounding 25 blocks after the Great Fire in 1889, and continued water woes plagued the waterfront. The patterns of history are familiar. The visit covered a small section at and beneath Pioneer Square.

They keep calling Seattle's Underground 'spooky'. Sure, it's now abandoned and all. But it's just dilapidated empty spaces. Importantly, I'm not visiting alone in the night without light for guidance. Dohhhh. Safety in numbers huh. Hehehehe. And it's not exactly buried that way. The city could have filled up the subterranean passages or re-work them into commercial units, but they kept them for precious historical value.

Photo credit: Los Angeles Times.