The HIDDEN CITY below SEATTLE | The SEATTLE UNDERGROUND Tour

Hey there everyone, my... Hold on. Ooh, that's much better. Spooky. Anyways, you guys, my name's Eduardo Arroyo, but you can call me Ed. And today, I would like to tell you the story of the time that I visited Seattle and I got to participate in the mysterious Seattle Underground Tour. This tour takes you under this popular city, tells you the story that not a lot of people know about, all while you get to see places of the city that you didn't even know existed. This is going to be fun, spooky maybe, I don't know, but I turn off the lights just so that we are in the mood. So if you guys are interested in learning more about this hidden underground city in Seattle, come with me. So to start, I take it that most of you guys know the most popular places to visit in Seattle. When we went to Seattle last year, we got to go to the waterfront. We got on the Seattle grade wheel and we even took a cruise. That was pretty awesome. We also went to Pikes Place Market. We went to a lot of the stores there and we even got to check out the first ever Starbucks. We got to visit the Gum Wall, the Fremont Troll, and we even got to check out Gasworks Park. And of course, we didn't miss it. We went to the Space Needle. I'll leave a link to them in the description down below. All of those places are cool in their own way, but there's another place that not a lot of people know about. At least I didn't know when I was there. Hey there, you guys. We're here walking around the city of Seattle. It's barely six o'clock, but it already looks like it's like 10 or 11 or something. Right now, we're heading to a place that seemed very interesting. We were walking to Pikes Place in the morning and we passed this place that said that they have underground tours of the city of Seattle. We'll see how it goes. We'll catch you guys once we get there. We just made it here, you guys. Underground, let's check it out. We're reading the little brochure we got at the entrance. And what it says is that they're gonna take us to the different alleyways and sidewalks that were buried in the fire of 89 here in Seattle. It sounds really interesting. They say they make it funny and interesting. So hopefully, it doesn't disappoint. And hopefully, it's everything it says that is gonna be here in this brochure. Heading there now, you guys. Tour this way. When we got here, I think it said that there were only six more spots available and I can already hear the people. About the early days. And I will tell you some crazy, crazy stories too. In fact, wherever you're from, your town has some crazy stories too. Bill wrote many books in his lifetime, but this is one that we based in Toronto. It's called Sons of the... Before they took us out to explore the underground areas, they first gave us some background on the origin of this hidden city. Here, they told us about the history of Seattle, the beginnings of the city, and about some of their important characters. They do add a lot of humor in these sections, which I enjoyed. They told us about how some of the pioneers and then city officials were corrupt, that sex work was actually the biggest industry in early Seattle alongside logging. Seattle did start as a logging town after all. They also told us about the early problems that the city of Seattle had to face, including the really bad sewage problem, which was actually kind of gross to hear about. And lastly, they told us about the Seattle Fire of 1889, which destroyed the entire central business district in Seattle, which is actually this neighborhood of Pioneer Square. There were two main resolutions after the Seattle Great Fire. The first one was to build future buildings out of brick or stone instead of wood. And the second one was to actually raise the floor level higher so that they could avoid the sewage problems that they had dealt with in the past. In order to raise the floor level higher, the city literally had to dump dirt and bury some areas of town. And the merchants had to agree to build multiple stories high, knowing that one day, those lower sections will be buried underground. And that, my friends, is the origin of the Seattle Underground City in a nutshell. We'll be getting more details on that later. We'll be back here in an hour. Once they gave us that short background, we were ready to go and explore the mysterious underground. They were telling us a lot of stories of how the city of Seattle came to be. And a lot of, I guess, controversial things related to the city officials and the first mayor specifically. In the end, they told us how the Seattle Fire of 1889 happened which was the reason why the place we're visiting underground was covered. So this is gonna be interesting. I'm liking it so far. Following our tour guide now. I wonder where she's taking us. And then we started following the tour lady around the city. And it just blew my mind. Just the fact that people walk these streets every day and some of them might have no idea of what's below them. That's crazy. Apparently, we're going through this door. Whoa, it's kind of steep. Whoa, it's pretty cool, you guys. During Prohibition, this was a speakeasy. And the door that we just walked through up there is this window right here. These windows and this doorway represent those windows. And this building here, you guys, was destroyed. But this is 25 years before the fire. Blocks and blocks of these wooden buildings. Morning after the fire. Do you know where the stadiums are on First Avenue? Because they're right here today. So basically, what she was saying is that we actually went through the second floor. Through that window. And now, we're down here. It was a big chunk of space that was buried underground. It's crazy. Everywhere we go underground, you see debris. This stuff here was dumped after the 1949 earthquake. This is basically a dumping ground. It's actually kind of creepy. I don't want to be the one left out in the back. But I think that's what happened. We're right here where the guy with the box on his shoulders. Okay, so after the fire, the town is discussing this rebuilding. And the city officials always wanted to regrade because they knew that was the only way to get rid of the drainage and sewage problem. So this neighborhood where the fire happened, they said, okay, we're gonna regrade this neighborhood first. And all those merchants said, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This regrade sounds good, but when do we get to build? So what the tour lady was saying here is that both city officials and merchants that were impacted by the 1889 fire were both on board with the regrade, which involved building higher above sea level in order to avoid those sewage problems that had impacted the city in the past. The merchants knew that this would be a long process, moving the dirt over so that they could raise the floor level. It was estimated to take from seven to 10 years. However, business owners needed to get back to business right away. So they couldn't just wait that much time in order to start rebuilding their businesses. So on one side, you have business owners that are starting construction again to get back to work. And on the other side, the city is raising the ground level around these businesses. So for some time, the situation was a bit weird. I mean, could you imagine that? That you're shopping around and then you get to the store and you literally have to set up a ladder so that you can go down. And not just that, but this whole situation sounds a bit dangerous, because it was. Actually, 17 people died from what they called involuntary suicide. Okay. Okay, so that was it for site number one. We did explore the place a little bit before heading out to the second site. It kind of feels like a field trip. She's guiding us and we're all like walking together and stuff. I think that's still the fun. What do you see? Anything interesting? Wait, don't point at what you're pointing to. Go over and point at what you're looking at. Is it here? Yeah. You have good eyes. I call her my little ghost bride. Because to me that looks like a woman in a wedding dress. There's her veil, there's her bouquet. We're right here. This is Seattle 11 years before the fire. We have done nothing to the picture. So this part is where things get a little bit spooky. She first starts telling us about this picture, about the woman in the picture to be more exact. And then she told us that this picture has undergone some changes without anyone touching it. She then straight up told us that some people actually do see things as they're going through the tour or in their pictures. I was hoping that we would see something today, but no luck. We also get more of the history, like when Seattle was struggling with money, they needed to collect more taxes. So they decided to conduct this occupational survey. And in the survey, they actually discovered that in this little logging town of Seattle, there were thousands of women who claimed to be seamstresses or garment workers when the city didn't even have a dressmaking factory. So that's when they discovered that sex work was actually keeping this town afloat. They obviously turned a blind eye because they needed the money. And after some exploring, we get to this other area where we learn about skylights. I'm gonna go turn the lights off in a little bit so you can see how much light still coming through the skylights. Did you guys notice these when we walk over? Yeah. Well, if you missed them, you're gonna be standing on top of this one when we leave here. At the time, the skylights were a method to bring light into these sections of the underground. Remember how we said that the city was raising the ground level above these businesses? Well, as the years passed, some businesses started to get more money, so they decided to move from the underground and build upstairs. A lot of these businesses couldn't afford this just yet, so they had to stay underground. So in order to help the situation, the city decided to create some sidewalks partially made with glass so that the sun could shine through. These were called skylights or pavement lights. This all sounds like a great idea, right? Until people realized that the moonlight would also get through. So they started using these places for illegal purposes, such as brothels, speakeasies, and for illegal gambling. She then went ahead and told us more about this place's ties with Seattle's history. In 1896, gold's discovered up in what is now the area of Alaska. Thousands and thousands and thousands of men were showing up in this town, and they were coming here to buy their mining supplies before they went north. And because of all the amount of supplies there were 10-foot walls stacked on the sidewalks. In the underground, there were crates and barrels, sacks of grain. This ended up being the perfect condition for rats. In 1907, bubonic plague hit Seattle. The health department said there were so many rats down here at nighttime that the ground was moving. And of course, before we left, she kept telling us more ghost stories, trying to scare us. She was just messing with us. How many of you have been snapping here? Have you looked at them? Oh, snap. Every once in a while, someone will take a little something extra home on a photo. And of course, that's me taking some video, then staying behind, and then having to run back to safety with the group. All jokes aside, it did feel like there was something there. I don't know, it was kind of creepy. And I was at the very end, I was like, hopefully nothing chases me down or something. That was kind of freaky. So these are the skylights that we saw down at the bottom. Right here. That's so interesting, how you don't think about it, but there's like a whole different world down there. Then the group walked for a bit more. The tour lady shared more cool facts. She told us about the history of the neighborhood. And we also got to see the skylights from above, which was pretty cool after hearing their backstory. And then we hit it down one last time. We're going out, and that's the internet. That was so cool. It was really interesting. Strongly, strongly recommend. And then you come out here to a gift shop, of course. As I mentioned at the beginning, you guys, I didn't plan to take part in this underground tour, but I can tell you that I've really enjoyed my experience and I strongly, strongly recommend it if you make your way to Seattle. So there you have it, guys. That is the video of the Seattle underground tour. If you're interested, I'll leave a link to their website in the description down below. Also in the description, you guys, you'll find the other videos that I mentioned at the beginning, the other Seattle videos, such as the Space Needle, the Fremont Troll, Pike Place Market, et cetera. You'll find those links right there as well. I really hope you guys enjoy the video as much as I did. If that is the case, I'm gonna ask you to please go ahead and click on the like button and subscribe to my channel if you wanna see more interesting and cool travel videos, just like this one. And just to remind you to be kind, have an open mind. I'll see you next time.