Beneath the streets of Portland lies a network of underground passageways known as the Shanghai Tunnels. For generations, they’ve been linked to tales of kidnappings, secret passages, and one of the Pacific Northwest’s most enduring legends. But how much of the story belongs to history… and how much has grown through retelling?

Transcript

Tonight, on the Midnight Drive, every city has stories.

Not the kind you’ll find on historical markers, the kind someone leans in to tell after the
sun goes down.

You know the ones, have you heard about?
Portland has one of those stories.

Beneath the streets, people will tell you there’s a network of old tunnels that once
carried cargo between the waterfront and the businesses above.

And depending on who’s telling the story, they carried something else, too.

For more than a century, people have argued about what really happened beneath Old Town.

Some insist the tunnels became part of a hidden world, where unsuspecting people disappeared
without a trace.

Others say the legend has grown far beyond what the historical record can support.

Tonight, we’re heading beneath the streets of Portland to follow one of Oregon’s most
enduring legends, and the people who have kept it alive.

If you’ve ever visited an older city, you’ve probably noticed something.

The street that you’re standing on isn’t always the first one that was built there.

Have you ever noticed this?
Cities have a habit of growing upward.

One generation lays foundations, the next raises the sidewalks.

Buildings expand, roads are routed, floods come and go.

Entire neighborhoods quietly reshape themselves until yesterday’s street becomes today’s basement.

Portland is no exception.

Long before the coffee shops, the bookstores, and food carts that many people associate
with the city today, this was a rough and tumble river port.

The Willamette River served as Portland’s lifeline, bringing ships, goods, workers,
and opportunity into a city that seemed to be growing almost faster than anyone could
keep track of.

It was busy, sometimes chaotic, and like many busy port cities of the 19th century, it was
not always neat and tidy.

Much of Old Town was built with practicality in mind.

Businesses needed ways to move cargo without constantly blocking already crowded streets.

Basements connected to one another.

Interesting, right?
Passageways linked buildings to warehouses near the waterfront.

Goods could be unloaded from ships and moved beneath the bustle above.

Creating wagons, rail lines, and the constant congestion that came with a thriving harbor.

Super practical, right?
That’s not scary.

There’s nothing particularly mysterious about any of that.

In fact, it’s very clever engineering.

If all we had were blueprints and construction records, the story might end there.

A network of underground passageways built to solve a logistical problem.

Useful, ordinary, easy to overlook.

But history rarely stays confined to blueprints, especially in places where thousands of people
have lived, worked, celebrated, and disappeared into the flow of everyday life.

Port cities have always carried a certain reputation.

They’re places where strangers arrive without any introduction.

Where sailors spend weeks or months far away from home.

Where fortunes are made.

Where fortunes disappear just as quickly.

Where every dock seems to have at least one story that no one can quite verify.

Portland is no exception.

Newspapers from the 19th century are filled with reports of organized crime, waterfront
corruption, and the dangerous realities of life along the river.

Like many ports of the era, the city struggled with Shanghai-ing.

That’s the illegal practice of coercing or kidnapping men into service aboard ships desperate
for crew members.

It happened in Portland, just as it did in other major ports around the world.

That much isn’t really in dispute.

What is debated is where those crimes actually took place.

See, over time, stories began to spread that the underground passageways themselves became
part of the operation.

The version most people know goes something like this.

A sailor stops for a drink after work.

Maybe he’s celebrating something.

Maybe he’s simply trying to escape the rain for an hour.

He wakes up somewhere dark.

By the time he understands what has happened, he’s already aboard a ship leaving Portland.

It’s an unforgettable story.

It’s also one historians continue to debate.

Researchers generally agree that the tunnels existed.

They agree that Shanghai-ing occurred.

But many also point out that there is remarkably little evidence showing that the tunnels themselves
were routinely used to carry out those particular kidnappings.

Much of that connection appears to have grown through newspaper stories, later retellings,
and popular underground tours that began decades after the events themselves.

Now, that doesn’t make the story worthless.

It’s quite the opposite, because now I found myself wondering something I hadn’t expected.

If the tunnels were built to move freight, how in the world did they become famous for
moving people?
See, somewhere along the way, this city’s infrastructure became its folklore.

Track passageways became secret escape routes.

The storage rooms are now prison cells.

Trap doors became invitations to disappear.

It’s pretty fascinating how naturally that transformation feels, isn’t it?
Not because people were trying to deceive anyone.

Stories, like the ones we tell here on the Midnight Drive, tend to grow the same way
that rivers do.

Bear with me.

They follow the landscape that they are given.

Think about it.

A detail gets repeated.

Another detail gets added.

Someone remembers hearing it from a grandparent.

A newspaper prince in a specially colorful account.

A tour guide tells the version that people remember on the drive home.

Little by little, the story settles into the city itself.

Until one day, visitors arrive believing the legend has always existed, exactly as they
first heard it.

In those dim brick corridors today, it’s surprisingly difficult to separate the physical
space from everything that’s been said around it.

You aren’t just walking through old passageways, you’re walking through generations of storytelling.

And perhaps that’s why the Shanghai tunnels continue drawing people underground.

Not because every question has been answered, but because some stories become part of the
places that inspired them.

After the break, we’ll follow the legend a little further and ask why certain versions
of history seem to outlive the facts that first gave them life.

You’re listening to the Midnight Drive.

There’s something that I couldn’t stop thinking about after reading everything that I could
find on the Shanghai tunnels.

The tunnels themselves never changed.

There’s still brick passageways beneath Old Town.

They’re still narrow, they’re still dimly lit, they’re still cool enough that visitors
often notice the temperature before anything else.

The physical place has remained remarkably consistent.

The story, on the other hand, has not.

See, every generation seems to inherit that story a little bit differently.

One newspaper emphasizes the danger of Portland’s waterfront.

A local historian points towards shipping records and police records.

A tour guide tells the version visitors will remember years later.

Someone goes home and tells a friend.

That friend fills in a detail that they couldn’t quite remember.

By the time the story reaches the next generation, there you have it.

It’s become something new.

It’s not completely different.

It’s just a little bit bigger, it’s a little larger.

And I don’t think that’s unique to Portland, I don’t think it’s unique to Oregon.

I think that’s just what stories do.

Imagine sitting around a campfire.

Someone tells a funny story about getting lost on a hiking trail.

Everybody laughs and laughs and laughs.

A week later, someone else repeats it.

Suddenly, the trail was steeper and the rain was heavier.

The hike took longer than anyone remembered.

Nobody is trying to lie, they’re trying to tell a good story.

Those aren’t always the same thing.

The interesting part is that both versions contain something true.

One preserves the facts, the other preserves the feeling.

And sometimes the feeling is the one that survives.

And that’s something that historians wrestle with all of the time.

Old newspaper accounts can contradict one another.

Eyewitnesses remember the exact same event quite differently.

Official records tell one story and family stories tell another.

Reading through those layers isn’t always about deciding who is right.

It’s about understanding why each version exists in the first place.

Take the phrase, Shanghain.

Today that word almost sounds mythical, doesn’t it?
Like something that belongs in a pirate novel.

But for people living in a busy port city during the 19th century, it described a very
real crime.

Men were sometimes coerced, intoxicated, or forcibly recruited onto ships that needed
crews.

It happened in Portland, it happened in San Francisco, it happened in Liverpool, and in
ports around the world.

That reality alone is unsettling enough, right?
You don’t need hidden tunnels to make it frightening.

And yet, the tunnels remained.

Not because they’re essential to the history of it all, but because they’re essential
to the story that’s being told.

If you break it down, it’s easier to picture a dark passageway than a complicated legal
dispute.

It’s easier to imagine a hidden trap door than corrupt business practices.

Stories like characters.

Stories like settings.

Stories like details that you can almost see.

A brick tunnel disappearing beneath the street.

That’s unforgettable.

Corruption within 19th century maritime labor?
Important.

But not nearly as cinematic, and frankly, it’s not as interesting to the listener.

I started wondering if that’s part of the reason certain versions of history endure.

Not because they’re the most accurate, but because they’re the easiest to picture.

Close your eyes for a moment, unless you’re driving.

Someone saying, a man disappeared beneath the streets of Portland, Oregon.

Your mind immediately begins building the scene.

What does that look like?
You can almost hear footsteps echoing against old brick.

You can smell the damp earth.

You can see lantern light flickering down a narrow corridor.

It’s pretty vivid, isn’t it?
Now imagine someone saying, maritime labor practices were poorly regulated during the
late 19th century.

It’s true, and it’s historically important, but.

.

.

Your imagination doesn’t have much to hold on to.

One becomes information, the other becomes a story.

And stories have an incredible ability to travel.

Long after the people who first told them are gone.

And that’s one reason that folklore fascinates me.

Especially like urban legends, the localized stuff.

It’s not because folklore ignores history, it’s because it reveals what people felt was
worth remembering.

Sometimes that’s a warning.

Sometimes it’s a celebration.

Sometimes it’s an attempt to explain something that felt way too complicated to summarize
any other way.

And the Shanghai tunnels sit right at that intersection.

History gives us one picture, folklore paints another layer over the top of it.

Neither completely erases the other, instead they become intertwined.

Walk through the tunnels today, and it’s almost impossible not to carry both versions in your
mind at the same time.

The documented history, and the story that’s been passed from one person to the next for
more than a hundred years.

I don’t think that’s a flaw.

In fact, it might be one of the most human things that we do.

We take ridiculously complicated events, and we turn them into stories someone can
remember on the drive home.

After all, most of us don’t pass history down through textbooks.

Instead, we pass it across dinner tables.

We pass it on long car rides.

We pass it down around campfires and quiet conversations that begin with, have you ever
heard about?
After the break, I’d like to leave the tunnels for a little while and look at something even
older than Portland itself.

Because once I started noticing how stories grow, I realized the Shanghai tunnels aren’t
unusual at all.

There’s simply another chapter and something people have been doing for thousands of years
right here on the Midnight Drive.

All right, we’re back.

I started thinking about the first story that I could remember that couldn’t be verified.

Okay?
It was a playground hearsay story, just like every generation has, right?
And for the kids growing up the 90s, you know where this is going.

There’s something amazing when somebody on the playground would say, I heard.

.

.

That was enough.

We’re hooked.

We want to know what happened next.

There’s something almost magical and captivating about those two words, huh, there?
I heard.

I’m going to give you four words here.

And the 90s kids, you know what’s going on.

This one’s for you, all right?
And I’m intrigued for the people who are listening to this all over the world if you know what
I’m talking about.

I heard Marilyn Manson.

.

.

Anybody?
All right.

Yeah, I know some of you know where that story went.

Let’s get back to it.

When people were telling stories like this, back before people were writing books, back
before there were newspapers, back before the documentaries and the podcasts, all of
that stuff, stories traveled exactly that way.

One voice, then another, then another, then another, all right?
Now, imagine trying to remember an important event before anybody could write it down.

Not the exact date.

Not every single conversation.

Just enough information that your children and their children and their children and
their children would understand why that event mattered.

You’d simplify it.

You’d remember the moments that painted the clearest picture.

The dangerous river crossings.

The strange light that appeared in the woods.

The old tree where everyone agreed to meet.

The details become landmarks.

And landmarks become stories.

And stories become surprisingly durable.

Anthropologists have found examples of oral traditions preserving meaningful details across
many generations.

The exact wording changes.

Small details come and go, but the heart of the story often remains remarkably consistent
because each storyteller passes along what they believe is most important.

That struck me.

Not because it’s unusual, but because it’s something that we still do.

Think about the last family story that you heard.

Maybe it was about your grandfather fixing an old truck with nothing more than bailing
wire and stubbornness.

Maybe it was a story everyone tells at Thanksgiving.

The one where somebody burned the pie.

Or got lost on the way to dinner.

Or laughed so hard they couldn’t finish telling the story.

Ask three different family members what happened.

And you’ll probably get three different versions.

Nobody’s trying to rewrite history.

They’re remembering different moments.

One person remembers the joke.

Another remembers the embarrassment.

Someone else remembers where everyone was sitting.

The facts shift a little bit.

The story survives.

That’s a remarkable trait, isn’t it?
And I think places participate in that process.

A tunnel, a bridge, a lighthouse, an abandoned schoolhouse.

They are like anchors.

They give a story somewhere to live.

Without the Shanghai tunnels, Portland would still have a history of waterfront crime.

But the tunnels give that history a setting.

Somewhere that you can stand.

Somewhere you can point to.

Somewhere a parent can bring a teenager and say, this is where the story happened.

Where every detail happened exactly that way almost becomes secondary.

The location keeps the conversation alive.

I noticed something else while reading through old accounts.

The stories that survive aren’t always the biggest stories.

Sometimes they’re simply the easiest to retell.

Imagine trying to explain Portland’s 19th century shipping economy.

It takes a while.

You have to talk about trade routes, labor shortages, river traffic, economics, politics.

But now imagine saying this.

There are tunnels beneath our city.

Suddenly everybody leans in.

It’s not because people dislike history.

It’s because our brains naturally organize information into narratives.

We remember beginnings, middles, endings, characters, places, conflict, resolutions,
stories are portable.

Facts often are not.

I don’t think that’s something we should be embarrassed about.

In fact, it’s one of the reasons history survives at all.

Every generation inherits a stack of stories.

Some become books.

Some become songs.

Some become legends whispered during walking tours beneath the city streets.

And some slowly disappear because nobody repeats them.

And that might be the saddest fate that a story can have.

Not being proven wrong, just simply being forgotten.

And maybe that’s why cities work so hard to preserve places like Old Town.

Not because every brick is historically significant, but because places help us remember.

Walk through those tunnels today.

And you’re not just looking at old masonry.

You’re stepping into a conversation that’s been going on for generations.

Some people arrive convinced every legend is completely true.

Others arrive determined to separate fact from fiction.

Most visitors, though, leave somewhere in between.

Not because every question has been answered necessarily, but because they’ve become part
of the story.

And it made me smile when I thought about that.

Every person who walks those tunnels goes home with their own version of the story.

Some of those visitors remember the architecture.

And some of them remember the history.

And some remember the tour guides favorite story.

Some remember the feeling of standing beneath a modern city, imagining all of the lives
that passed overhead long before they arrived.

And eventually they tell somebody else, hey, have you heard about the Shanghai tunnels?
And the story continues.

Not because it’s frozen in time, but because every storyteller quietly leaves their fingerprints
all over it.

And after the break, we’re going to take one last walk beneath the streets of Portland.

There’s one thought I haven’t been able to shake since we started this drive.

It has less to do with the tunnels and more to do with why human beings seem to build
stories almost as naturally as they build cities.

Up next on the Midnight Drive.

All right, as this drive comes to an end, I keep coming back to one simple observation.

The Shanghai tunnels didn’t become famous because someone discovered a secret.

They became famous because people kept telling the story.

I know that might sound obvious, but the more I sat with it, the weirder it became.

Cities are full of buildings, old streets, old basements, old staircases.

Most of them never become legends.

So why these tunnels?
Why this story?
I don’t think there’s a single answer.

Perhaps every generation found something different inside of it.

For some, it was a warning about the dangers of the waterfront.

For others, it was a mystery waiting to be solved.

For someone leading a walking tour, it was a chance to bring history to life.

And for someone hearing it for the very first time, it might simply be the beginning of
a good conversation.

The story changes because the people telling it keep changing.

I found myself thinking about that while looking through old pictures of Portland.

The city is almost unrecognizable in some of them.

Horse-drawn wagons, wooden sidewalks, ships crowding the river.

People dressed in ways that seem impossibly distant now.

And yet, if you could stand on one of those corners long enough, I wonder what you’d hear.

Not the traffic.

The conversations.

Someone complaining about the weather.

Someone arguing over the price of lumber.

Someone telling a friend about something unbelievable that happened just a few blocks away.

I have a feeling that last one wouldn’t sound very different from today.

Because people have always loved a good story.

Not just because stories entertain us, but because they help us organize a complicated
world.

When something surprises us, what do we do?
We tell someone.

When something scares us, we tell someone.

When something makes us laugh, we tell someone.

And every time we do, the story changes ever so slightly.

It’s not enough to become unrecognizable, just enough to sound like us.

That’s why I don’t think folklore belongs in a separate category from history.

They’re neighbors.

History asks, what happened?
And as we’ve been talking about, those aren’t always the exact same thing.

But they’re both worth listening to.

One gives us the shape of the past.

The other gives us its texture.

Every person who visits the Shanghai tunnels eventually leaves with their own version of
their experience.

Some go home talking about 19th century Portland.

Some remember the architecture.

Some can’t stop thinking about the stories.

And some leave unconvinced by the legends altogether.

But fascinated that those legends have survived this long in the first place.

None of those reactions are wrong.

They’re just another layer being added to a story that’s already been told for more
than 100 years.

Maybe that’s how places stay alive.

Not because every brick survives, but because the conversations do.

A child hears a story from a parent, and years later, they tell it to someone else.

A tour guide adds one specific detail.

A historian corrects another.

Someone remembers a newspaper article.

Someone remembers what their grandfather used to say.

Little by little, the city keeps talking about itself.

And maybe that’s what I enjoy the most about spending time beneath Portland.

Not trying to separate every fact from every embellishment.

Just noticing how a community continues to carry its own stories forward.

I think there’s something incredibly hopeful about that.

Not because every legend turns out to be true, but because every generation decides that
some stories are still worth repeating.

As I pull away from Old Town, I caught myself looking back one last time.

The streets were busy.

People were crossing the intersections.

The restaurants opening their doors.

And the streetcars.

The streetcars moving through the city, just like they always have.

Most of the people walking above those old passageways probably were not thinking anything
about the tunnels beneath their feet.

And that’s all right.

Cities work like that.

Life keeps moving forward, and the stories wait patiently.

That is, until somebody asks, have you ever heard about the Shanghai tunnels?
Then another person leans in, and the conversation begins again.

And somehow, a century later, the story is still making the trip.

How about that?
Thank you so much for joining me on tonight’s drive.

Until next time, we’ll stay here in Oregon, where another familiar legend is waiting just
around the bend.

Until then, take care of each other, and I’ll meet you farther down the road.