Distinctly Montana Magazine

W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 67 But Havre is not alone in having once had a secret life under- ground. ere are also tunnels under Butte, Missoula, and Billings, some open to the public, some still entombed in the past. Take Billings' tunnels, for instance. ere have always been per- sistent rumors of bootlegging, opium and smuggling under Billings' streets. And the rumors have longevity, since the Billings Gazette tried to put them to rest as far back as 1943 with the headline "No Tunnel System." Even so, urban legends about the size and complexity of Billings' tunnels continue; the FBI inquired about the tunnels after 9/11, investigating their possible utility to terrorists or enemy agents. It is harder than ever to parse out the truth of the Billings' tunnels, with 100 years of stories and conjecture to wade through. But one thing is beyond question: there are steam tunnels under Billings' streets, over three miles of them radiating out from the town's old water heating plant, now defunct but once the largest west of the Missouri River. But they were, and are, narrow and winding, hardly fit staging grounds for large-scale criminal enterprises. Nevertheless, they have acquired a somewhat sinister reputation. It might be that part of them are still jammed with supplies for surviving a nuclear catastrophe—old sanitation kits bomb shelter supplies are stacked to the ceiling in some corridors. ough closed to the public, the walls bear ominous messages in graffiti, like "To Hell, Step High" and "Beware the Devil", which seems to suggest the Billings tunnels will be the subject of Montana's urban (or would that be rural?) legends for a long time to come. Not to be outdone, Missoula also has tunnels. And like Billings, theirs are also steeped in lore. As University of Montana grad student Nikki Manning, author of the book Historic Underground Missoula, reports, stories about how "the Chinese built the tunnels in order to travel around without being seen" and "that they smoked opium in the tunnels." In fact, the idea that Chinese immigrants built the tunnels is, she says, a "very com- mon myth" in any Western city with tunnels. Even so, it is possible that "Chinese labor was used to build some of the tunnels." Also, according to old maps, "female boarding" houses (read: brothels) and saloons dwelled down there. And, interestingly, one of Missoula's tunnels, underneath the now deconstructed Missoula Mercantile, is rumored to have been used by John Wayne to get from his hotel to the Mercantile in order to buy some new duds at the Merc without being spotted by fans. e story is hard to confirm, but it adds another layer of oral history to an already storied city. UNDERNEATH MONTANA'S STREETS PHOTO COURTESY OF OLD BUTTE HISTORICAL ADVENTURES Havre market Billings Speakeasy

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