[music playing] DON WILDMAN: At the turn
of the 20th century, America was home to one
of the most dangerous vice-filled cities in the world. Portland, Oregon. Today it's among the country's
most desirable places, but it secretly harbors an
underworld darker than you could possibly imagine. Whether it's trap doors used
to kidnap unsuspecting victims. Jeez. They fell right
into a holding cell. The eerie recesses
of a drug utopia. So this is an actual
opium den, huh? The lost stash of the
city's bootlegging queen. DAVE CAMPA: You can see there's
plenty of stuff still in there. DON WILDMAN: There's
old whiskey bottles. Or even an illegal
underground fight club, Portland has more dark corners
than any medieval dungeon and danger looms
around every corner. CHRIS SCHINDLER: We are in a
hazardous atmosphere right now. We need to vacate
this hole, right. DON WILDMAN: The sins
of Portland's past are alive and well. They're just buried
beneath the surface. We're peeling back
the layers of time on "Cities of the Underworld",
Underground Bootleggers. I'm Don Wildman. I'm in Portland, Oregon. And for nearly a century,
this was America's vice city. Walking around today
you'd never know it, but Portland's seedy past is
buried just below its streets. 100 years ago, this was a Wild
West port town where you could be kidnapped and sold into
slavery, where gambling, drugs, prostitution, and murder
were on every street corner. Today, Portland is a model city. Clean, safe, progressive. But look beneath its
cosmopolitan coffeehouses and bookstores, and
Portland's sordid dark past is soon revealed. America's Wild West has
numerous tales to tell, but few are more
shocking than the story of the tiny settlement
originally known simply as The Clearing. This no man's land would quickly
flourish into a thriving port, but the civilized
face of the streets above was only a mask from what
was really going on down below. In the late 1800s,
Portland was known as one of the most dangerous
ports in the world. For sailors coming
into the city, it was easy to find a good time. Speakeasies, drug
dens, and brothels operated right under the
nose of the local police. But for the rough
and tumble mariners, the lure of a good
time could turn deadly. They'd wander into
a bar or brothel and suddenly a trap
door would drop open, and they'd plummet into
a dark underground. They didn't know it yet, but
they had just been shanghaied. The practice of
shanghaiing was all too common among the shipping
ports of the West Coast. The term comes, of course, from
Shanghai, China's largest city, and it all goes back
to the Opium Wars. In the 19th century,
opium was illegal. The Chinese emperor had it
outlawed a century earlier. But the Western powers,
hungry for a healthy profit, paid no attention. The British imported
massive amounts of the drug into China, getting
the Chinese hooked. In 1839 when the irate Chinese
emperor seized more than 20,000 chests of opium, Britain fought
back with a stronger army and forced China to
turn over several ports to British control. Soon other Western nations
like France and the US gained access to the
coveted Chinese ports. Shanghai, now
controlled by the West, became a den of vice and
corruption and its popularity skyrocketed. So how did Portland connect to
this international drug war? With China now open for
business to the West, ship captains needed
sailors and lots of them for these lucrative
journeys to the Orient. But they had trouble
convincing men to ditch the allure of the Gold
Rush to set sail for Shanghai. The trips could take
years to complete, pay was notoriously low,
and living conditions aboard the vessels
were deplorable. Ship owners hired local thugs to
drug or kidnap able-bodied men and stow them away
on their ships. When the men came to,
they found themselves in the middle of the
Pacific with two choices. Work as a slave or
be tossed overboard. I met up with Michael Jones. Hey, Michael. An expert on Portland
Shanghai tunnels. And he was going to take me down
into the expansive underworld of the city's
sailor slave trade. All right. This is where you
get shanghaied. This is where you
still get shanghaied. DON WILDMAN: Few
people realize it, but right in the middle
of a modern day street, an inconspicuous opening
actually leads to the off limit network of tunnels. And Michael is
one of the few who has a key to this
subterranean door. MICHAEL JONES: Now you're
venturing into places that a lot of people went
into and never came back up through the section. There is no other place like
this through the entire United States. DON WILDMAN: Oh, wow. So we are underneath of
a working restaurant? MICHAEL JONES: Yes. This is Hobo's storage space. But once you reach the
dirt, when you cross from the concrete to the
dirt, you're officially in the Shanghai tunnels. DON WILDMAN: I see. These tunnels stretch for five
miles underneath the city. So this is all,
this is the tunnel that we're talking about here. MICHAEL JONES: This is it. This is the real McCoy. DON WILDMAN: And
can be found lying dormant beneath modern
day homes and businesses. They were constructed of both
brick archways and wood support beams. Simple and practical designs
that would keep the world above from ever knowing that the
ground beneath its feet was being hollowed out. These tunnels first
appeared in 1850, before the city was
officially incorporated. The official version is that
they were constructed strictly to transport goods
from the ships at port to the hotels and saloons
scattered throughout Portland. But the real story
is much seedier. In 1870, these tunnels
became infamous, and for nearly 50 years
an entire industry of human trafficking was just
below the unsuspecting public above. Did they actually construct
it for that purpose? Yes.
Yes. Wow. You know, some people like to
say it was used to bring goods in from the waterfront
so you didn't have to have to go above
ground, but it was actually for shanghaiing. So right above our heads is a
bar, and was in those days too? This was Lasso Saloon. DON WILDMAN: Lasso Saloon was
one of Portland's most popular hangouts. Today, Lasso's is known
as Hobo's Restaurant. But more than 130 years ago
it was in places like Lasso's where unsuspecting men would get
sucked down to the underground. Guys were assaulted upstairs
and brought down into this space here? Yeah, generally they
did it a little bit nicer. They utilized the drinks in the
bars, spiked them with knock out drops. When they were woozy, dropped
them through a trapdoor in the floor. Wait. So you're just standing
in the bar, doing nothing, and all of a sudden the
bottom drops out on you and down you come.
- Right. But you're drunk and everybody
else is drunk around you, and they don't know
what's going on. So this whole
thing was a setup. I mean the bartender
was involved, the owner of the place, the whole thing? MICHAEL JONES:
And a lot of times the shanghaiers were the
secret owners of those saloons. DON WILDMAN: OK. MICHAEL JONES: So
everybody was making money. DON WILDMAN: I see. MICHAEL JONES: And how
much money are they making? $50 a man. DON WILDMAN: With that
type of price per man making it out of the saloon
didn't mean you were safe. The tunnels took us beyond
the limits of the saloon underneath the actual
streets of Portland. And just around the corner
from Lasso's was an alley with a nasty surprise. MICHAEL JONES: This trap door
here is actually in a dead end alley. That means at the
far end of the alley, you forced your victim into
that section and then-- Jesus. They fell down here? They fell right
into a holding cell. Christ. But the captains needed healthy
men for their long voyages, so every precaution was taken
to deliver a good product. Wow, what are these things here? MICHAEL JONES: These are
Victorian mattresses. They were used in the
houses of prostitution. When they wore out, they brought
them into the underground, put them beneath the trap doors. So when the victims fell
through the trap door, they were not injured. Occasionally they died, but it
wasn't generally on purpose. DON WILDMAN: Right. Well, that's nice. The shanghaiers needed
to be careful themselves. The strong men they
kidnapped wouldn't be in the best of moods when
they came to underground. MICHAEL JONES: This is
where they held them. These are the actual bars. They're very unique. They're not made
with round stock. It's square stock. And if you notice, these bars
are deep and they're tapered. That way if the shanghaiers
is standing behind these, this cell, the victim can't
reach through and grab them. Because if they can
grab them, they're not going to turn loose. So how many men would
be in a cell like this? Like sardines. Really? And if a prisoner actually
managed to escape? Well, the shanghaiers were
more than prepared for that. Look at all this stuff. What is this? MICHAEL JONES: When they
grabbed their victims and brought them
to the underground, they took their shoes. DON WILDMAN: Really? MICHAEL JONES: Because the
shanghaiers broke glass and spread it throughout
the underground. So if you escape,
they can always follow the trail of blood. So this is a logger
who came in for a drink and ended up on a boat
shipped out around the world? Exactly. But he left his shoes behind. Just another eerie reminder
from Portland's seedy days left underground. A century ago, just beneath the
freewheeling Portland streets, a coiled labyrinth
of tunnels was home to the ruthless
shanghaiers, locals who would drug unsuspecting men
and drop them into cells built in Portland's underground. Before long, these unlucky
loggers and cowboys found themselves swabbing
the decks on the high seas. Shanghaiers were brutal
and unpredictable. Sometimes they would pack
as many men as possible into these tiny cells. Their victims would wake up,
completely unaware of what had happened or where they were. It's hard to imagine,
and yet countless people were put through this. And I had just seen this
vast complex of tunnels beneath Portland,
but there was more. This place is so vast. I mean, it keeps
going every direction. Yeah. It makes you believe
it goes on forever. And if you haven't been here
in the darkness and shadows by yourself, you
haven't experienced what you need to experience. Pretty eerie, I guess. So you need to
go on down here. And this is more of
the Shanghai tunnels. Look at this. I mean, it goes out
this way as well. And then down below
us is two more floors. Wow. You can just imagine, I mean,
all the terrifying things that happened down here. There was one area in particular
where the original cells are still intact. What do you find over here? This is a holding cell,
and it's very small. It actually goes
between the buildings. DON WILDMAN: This crawl
space up here, you mean? MICHAEL JONES: Exactly. DON WILDMAN: Can
you get up here? MICHAEL JONES: Yes,
there's a ladder over here. All right. Let's go get it. MICHAEL JONES:
This was in an area that they had to
share with rats. DON WILDMAN: Rats? MICHAEL JONES: This was
the worst place to be, and that's why they kept these
men pretty well drugged up. Right above me is a
working church in the middle of its service right now. And down here below, all this is
a holding cell, a holding area for kidnapped men,
shanghaied men in the 1800s. They would be stashed
in here like sardines. I mean, just smashed
in and held for however long it took to get
them on board a ship. The whole town is filled
with these small crawlspaces, these tunnels. It is awful to
think of this fate. Most likely you'd be dragged
to the river just three blocks away and sold, but there are
other places and other people hiding in the Shanghai tunnels. We'd started in the basement
of an Old West saloon and found ourselves winding
beneath the alleys and streets of Portland. About 50 feet from the
shanghaiers' prisons was a secret room 9
feet below the surface, and what went on down there
was even more profitable than shanghaiing. Where does this go? MICHAEL JONES: We're going
into a completely different building. In fact, every time you
go through an archway, you're in between buildings
or in a new building. DON WILDMAN: I see. What is this place? MICHAEL JONES: Well, you've
stumbled onto a white slaver's cell. Because white slavery was big
business here in Portland. DON WILDMAN: White slavery
was the cleaned up term for something far
worse, sexual slavery, and it began in these
claustrophobic cells measuring only 14 square feet. In the 19th century,
prostitution was running rampant. In some places the age
of consent was just 13, and young girls
were often forced into a life where they sold
themselves on a daily basis. MICHAEL JONES: These women
were grabbed from restaurants, dances, and right off
the street, brought into the underground,
locked up in what was nothing more than a very
tiny double walled closet. Logs lined the outer corners
so they couldn't kick their way out or beat their way out. And they kept them in total
darkness, total isolation, with the objective to
break their spirit. DON WILDMAN: In order
to break the women down, white slavers would degrade
and torture them but not physically. The slavers, like
the shanghaiers, needed their product to be
in good physical condition. Their torture was
purely psychological. The young girls and women would
then be sold as prostitutes or shipped off as sex slaves to
places like Chicago, New York, or even foreign ports overseas. Oh, man. This is so sad. These girls were forced
into the bowels of Portland, but not everyone came down
here against their will. Just 60 feet away from
the sex slave cells, we stumbled upon yet another
use for these passages. Oh, cool. Wow. So this is an actual
opium den, huh? MICHAEL JONES: Yes, it this. Jeez. MICHAEL JONES: This
is the real thing. They came down
into the opium den, they would purchase
their opium here, which they were going
to smoke in pipes and go on their opium dreams. DON WILDMAN: Opium dens were
another constant in Portland's underground and in many port
cities along the West Coast. They were designed exactly like
this one with numerous bunks. Patrons would lounge here
and smoke for hours on end without ever leaving this
tiny 100 square foot room. MICHAEL JONES: And because they
needed a relatively safe place to smoke, they would
rent themselves a bunk. DON WILDMAN: Uh-huh.
Sure. MICHAEL JONES: This
is an opium bunk. The bunk that was closest to the
ground was the most expensive, because when you fell out of
bed you didn't have far to go. DON WILDMAN: I see. Well you can
understand the comfort. Yes. Oh. From kidnapped men to sex
slaves and opium dens, the hidden horrors of
the Shanghai tunnels are only a few feet beneath
the streets of Portland. With all the dangers lurking
in any common hotel, alleyway, or saloon, what kept the
fast-blooming Rose City so popular? This port had a reputation
for keeping its secrets. At the turn of the
century what happened in Portland, stayed in Portland. And it would need to. This salacious town, along
with much of the United States, would soon find itself mired
in a struggle that would erupt into one of the
most crime-ridden and hard-living periods
in the nation's history. Above ground, the town
remained high-class, but that prim and proper
image was just a front. In reality, this city was
supplied with more booze than it could handle by a
secret world of smugglers and bootleggers hidden in
the city's vast underground. These thugs were rampant
throughout the city and across the country. And it was all the result of a
battle of morals that started over 50 years earlier. Prohibition began in 1920,
but its roots stretch back to the mid-1800s when
religious groups formed to combat social drunkenness. They preached and protested
in nearly every state, and their one and only solution
was to outlaw alcohol entirely. But the plan to outlaw
booze backfired. The crime syndicates in
places like New York, Chicago, and of course
Portland, hit pay dirt. Gangs thrived and liquor
flowed underground. I met up with James Louie, the
president of Portland's oldest restaurant, Huber's, and it was
his great uncle Jim who ran it nearly 90 years ago
during Prohibition. This is the original room? Yes, going back to 1910. We're on the National
Register of Historic Places. We've been in business
for 128 years now. DON WILDMAN: Originally, this
place was an Old West saloon, but when Prohibition
began in 1920 a new chapter in Huber's
history was written. Instead of closing up
shop, they converted the saloon above into a
restaurant and the real action happened down below. Through an off limits
door, we descended 10 feet and headed nearly 90
years back in time to an illegal speakeasy. I see. So this was where the
speakeasy would operate. That's correct, Don. And do you know what
it looked like, I mean? Well, from what I
understand, the walls were painted in kind
of a tropical scene. Oh, really? Kind of like the
Caribbean, because of no-- without any windows. Oh, OK. You had to make it look
lively and inviting, right. Yes, exactly. So it was a fully
operating bar scene? Absolutely. DON WILDMAN: Today,
this area is just used for storage for the
modern restaurant up above, but nearly 90 years
ago this tiny corridor would have led to a parallel
underground world devoted to keeping Jim's most important
customers fully satisfied. But getting into this
secret world wasn't easy. First, if you managed
to find the entrance, you'd be asked for a
password or a secret knock. Once you'd given up
the correct code, only then would you be allowed
access to a paradise of music, women, and booze. So these places had
to operate in secret. I mean, these-- they had to find
places that the law wouldn't find them and store their
booze down here as well. Supply was the most
important part of maintaining a lucrative speakeasy. With alcohol banned
across the entire country, an owner needed a
connection, someone to keep the glasses full and
the taps from running dry. How could a place
like Huber's continue to serve a steady
stream of alcohol and keep its reputation intact? Enter the bootleggers. Bootlegging was the trade de
jour during the roaring '20s, and it made gangsters like
Al Capone and Bugs Moran millionaires. Imports of Caribbean rum,
Canadian whiskey, English gin, and French champagne could
bring in as much as $200,000 per shipload at a time
when $50 was considered a good weekly wage. In Portland, most of the alcohol
would arrive via large mother ships just outside of US waters. Smaller ships, or contact
boats, would dock with them and buy their spirits. After loading up,
these small ships would have to evade the
Coast Guard on the lookout for illegal smugglers. But with smaller
and faster boats, the bootleggers
wouldn't have a problem, and they made sure their
valuable merchandise was well-protected. The mother ships were known
to have machine guns mounted on their decks. And on land, trucks
were closely watched by men armed with knives,
pistols, and Tommy guns. But in Portland, it wasn't a
king who ruled the bootleggers. It was a queen, and she
reigned supreme over the city's underground. Today, few people know that
beneath this unassuming modern day graphics house rests
the secret sanctuary of one of America's
wildest bootleggers. Come on in. Let's show you around. DON WILDMAN: Dave Campa
owns the graphics business that now runs up above. But in 2004, he discovered
that nearly 80 years ago it was another business that
had set up shop down below. 10 feet beneath the ground
floor was a nerve center of one of Portland's most notorious
bootlegging operations. Oh, wow. So this is the newest
part of the building here? This whole section here was
actually added on in the late '40s, we believe. It was originally built
as a retail marketplace. It was an Italian market. This was a big Italian
neighborhood back then. It had a full
service meat market. In fact, you can see the
original sign is still here on the back door. DON WILDMAN: "Jack Spratt
says it takes good meat to make a good meal". DAVE CAMPA: That's been
here as long as we have. DON WILDMAN: Really? That's pretty snappy. So that was what was
going on upstairs? Yes. DON WILDMAN: But something
altogether different down. Absolutely. Let me show you that. DON WILDMAN: All right. We're going to need
these flashlights. OK. It's pretty dark down there. All right. Welcome to our dungeon. Be careful walking down. It is awful dark. OK. Just 10 feet below the
streets are the leftovers of a bootlegging stronghold
known as The Dungeon. DAVE CAMPA: And this
is the old boiler room. DON WILDMAN: In its heyday,
this subterranean space would have been overflowing with
stacks and stacks of whiskey piled to the ceiling. Back in the '20s, this is
where the old building ended. The staircase we were
climbing down didn't exist. Instead, a concealed back
door would have opened up to a tiny closet and inside
was a trap door and a ladder leading down into the
bootleggers' subterranean lair. The boiler room was
the perfect place to store the booze that
quenched the city's thirst. DAVE CAMPA: This thing's been
around here a while, since '27 when they built it. Kind of a-- DON WILDMAN: Man, that
is a relic, isn't it? Not only was it concealed
beneath the busy trade of the market above, but it also
provided a quick and effective solution for getting rid of
the booze in case of a raid. This incinerator would have held
more than 25 whiskey bottles. And if things got really
bad, all it would have taken was a flip of a switch and
any trace of the alcohol would have gone up in flames. DAVE CAMPA: But you can
see there's plenty of stuff still in there. DON WILDMAN: There's
old whiskey bottles. Who knows? DAVE CAMPA: Who knows? And then there was another
one down here also. DON WILDMAN: So who was it
that kept this place stocked to the ceiling? It wasn't a gangster or
a hard-nosed mob boss. Instead, this was the dangerous
den of Prohibition Rose. She started as a Madam operating
several houses of prostitution, and when other avenues
opened up during Prohibition she seized the opportunity. She earned her name by
coordinating the transportation and distribution of a lot
of alcohol into Portland. She was her own microbrewery. DAVE CAMPA: Pretty much. She was the first
microbrewery in this area. DON WILDMAN: Rose's type
of whiskey was typically made in a large
continuous still, a device specially
designed to distill whiskey without ever stopping. The first column heats
fermented grain by steam, resulting in a semi-liquor gas
that is fed to a second column. Inside this second column,
the alcohol-rich vapors rise through perforated plates. Once they cool, the stripped
water flows to the bottom while the alcohol is
collected at the top. The result? An alcohol
concentration nearly 50% higher than other common stills. So above our heads, a
teeming Italian market? Correct. Down here, stacks
and stacks of whiskey. Correct. Boxes of whiskey. She had caches
all over this city. She also had inside information
on when raids were coming, I think through payoffs. And she made sure
that all her brothels had booze all the time. DON WILDMAN: So she was a
one-woman operation almost? DAVE CAMPA: She was. DON WILDMAN: She was
making it and delivering it and distributing it. Then distributing it. DON WILDMAN: Even though
Rose was careful to pay off the local authorities,
occasionally even she had close calls. One of the most
famous stories was, she was in one of her brothels. The police were
raiding the place. The men were running
around trying to figure out what to do with the booze. So Rose said, stack all
the booze in the center of the floor there. When they did that, she
lifted up her dress, pulled it over and
stood on top of it. DON WILDMAN: When the
police broke down the door, they found nothing
except Rose in the center of the room reading the Bible. One of the reasons
I don't think there's not a lot of history
on her, because she never got busted. 13 years after
Prohibition, the Sheriff pulls up to her house
up in Alder Creek and rolls down the window--
she was out front-- and says, time to
give it up, Rose. Times have changed.
Shut her down. Wow. And she did. They tore the
still apart, closed all of her houses
of prostitution, and she lived for quite a
few years up on Mount Hood. Wow. Good life. The days of rampant crime
and corruption in the city of Portland are long gone. Its once seedy waterfront is now
lined with multi-million dollar high rises. But Portland is a big city
and crime isn't entirely a thing of the past. In fact, if you
know where to look, evidence of Portland's
criminal activity is still flowing underground. Today, Portland's waste
flows like any other city's, through the sewer. But mixed in with
the water and sewage, are signs that an illegal drug
world still exists underground after all these years. The city's sewer system began
as a small wooden trough built in 1864 to collect the waste
along Montgomery Street. But as bootlegging
and the drug trade took over the underground,
the sewers became overridden with disease and pollution. And today, things
aren't much different. I met up with Chris Schindler,
one of Portland's finest, but he's not a police officer. A day of work down
the hole, huh? Another day in the hole. DON WILDMAN: He's a sewer
maintenance technician. Equipped for everything here. Well, equipped I can't say
for everything, but we try. DON WILDMAN: And he was about
to show me a world where innumerable dangers could claim
your life on a daily basis. All right. We're going down there?
- That's where we're going. - Can I get ready?
- Let's do it. There's your gear right there. Let's, let's hop in the hole. DON WILDMAN: There's
a lot of gear to prep, and it's all for a
very good reason. Chris has had more than
one close call down here. Today, Portland's sewers have
expanded to over 2,200 miles of tunnels, 4,400 catch basins,
and several thousand manholes. It's gone from serving a
few businesses and homes in the mid-1800s to over
half a million people. And if the waste was a
problem over 100 years ago, the trouble has increased
exponentially with the city's growth up above. What's the worst stuff
you've ever seen down there? The high flows
are the scariest. Yeah? Pump stations that turn on. There's rats. There's vandalism, which could
be shopping carts, wire-- DON WILDMAN: Shopping carts? It amazes me how they get
a shopping cart in a 24-inch manhole, but they do it. And then it's my
problem to get it out. DON WILDMAN: But that's
not the half of it. Every day he's down
here to make sure that Portland's underground
keeps the world up above safe and operational. That can mean anything from
repairing damaged sewer pipes with brick and cement,
to building dams, or even thawing blocks of ice
that have lodged in the lines. But the worst
dangers are unseen. All right. So you're telling
this what to test for. CHRIS SCHINDLER: So this
tests the four known gases. We have H2S, carbon
monoxide, oxygen and lower explosive limit. That is the gasoline, solvents-- [machine beeping] OK. So when it reaches a dangerous,
level this thing goes off-- And it will sound like this.
[machine beeping] This is the sound that
we do not want to hear. All right. Cool. These gases come from a mixture
of human waste, chemicals, and bacteria. Ah, there we go. Good morning. If their concentrations
are too high, it can knock you out or worse. Down. DON WILDMAN: And once all the
precautions were in place, I dropped down
into an underworld where danger exists every day. It looks deep, and it looks
dirty, and very, very tight. CHRIS SCHINDLER: Coming down! DON WILDMAN: We headed 30
feet beneath Portland streets into the middle of a 2,200-mile
network of waste and refuse. All right. So we're ready to go? CHRIS SCHINDLER: We are. DON WILDMAN: Let's rock. According to Chris, one of the
most destructive and deadly forces in the sewer is drug
trafficking, mainly of a drug called crystal meth. When you say dangerous,
what happens down here? So meth labs are getting
raided by the police, and they dump them
down the toilet? Usually if they're getting
raided, they're running and they're not worried
about dumping it. It's the operating meth lab
that I worry about most. Oh, really? CHRIS SCHINDLER: The one that
flushes all their bad stuff down the toilet. DON WILDMAN: Meth labs
are a constant problem. Oregon is struggling
with meth trafficking more so than any
other state today. The drug is easy to create and
can be made in nearly any type of environment. But while easy, the process is
extremely dangerous and toxic. The chemical gases are so
dangerous that you can die just from inhaling them. But even worse, when extracting
the chemical the solvents needed can easily explode, so
fires and powerful explosions are a frequent side effect. Chris not only has to worry
about the poisonous gases and contaminants from home meth
labs above, but also needles, glass tubes, and wires that
are flushed down as well. A single cut or wound
exposed to the bacteria down here could be deadly. And we got a taste of the danger
that lies beneath the streets. You can see the water
perking through here. DON WILDMAN: Sure, sure. You know, this is
clean groundwater. We're not too worried about
this as a contaminated source. But what we do worry
about is the mortar. [machine beeping] DON WILDMAN: I see. What's that beeping? We're getting a level,
a LEL level, which is a lower explosive limit. So somewhere up there must be
a chemical of some type coming through. We can't smell
anything ourselves? I can't smell it right now. So the canary is singing. Chris decided not to risk it. We are in a hazardous
atmosphere right now. Even though we're on air
masks, we should not, ought not to be in here. We need to vacate
his hole, right. DON WILDMAN: We immediately
went up to the surface. And once back above
ground, we had to be hosed off as an extra
precautionary measure. But that was only the beginning. Well, that's a bit cleaner. There are a lot more of
Portland's sewers to explore. My next stop was
called the Big Pipe. The project will clean
up the river and the city and help prevent catastrophic
environmental damage from future flooding. I met up with Greg Colzani
who was going to take me down into this massive project. I was getting an exclusive look. GREG COLZANI: Just come
over to the shaft here. DON WILDMAN: All right. Man, look at this. Greg is the construction manager
for Environmental Services. The Big Pipe is their pet
project, and it's a monster. It's part of a
20-year process that will cost the city of Portland
over a billion dollars. The gigantic tunnel will run
for six miles over 100 feet below the ground. By 2011, this wastewater
treatment system will help reduce sewage
overflow by a whopping 96%. God! GREG COLZANI: Just
hold on to your hat, you don't want to
send it down the roof. DON WILDMAN: That
is a huge hole. Why is it so big? GREG COLZANI: We have to
support the mining operation. You can see the tunnel
boring machine down in the shaft, just
the size of it. DON WILDMAN: There will be
seven of these giant shafts throughout Portland, but
they're only temporary. They're here simply
to provide access for the drilling process for a
6-mile subterranean mega pipe. But to really understand
this engineering marvel, I had to go down, way down. So we get lifted by the crane? Yes, the crane will pick us
up, swing us over, and lower us down the shaft. DON WILDMAN: Just digging this
shaft has taken nearly a year to complete, but now
comes the hard part. Wow! GREG COLZANI: Great view up. This is the best perspective. DON WILDMAN: Jesus! This is a big place. God. [bleep] I mean, this is a huge
project even in the big scheme of big construction. GREG COLZANI: This is
a big construction. DON WILDMAN: Yeah. So this is the wall that
you're going to drill? Correct. We're going to mine about 4
and 1/2 miles to the north. We'll take the machine apart,
bring it back, launch it, and finish the
rest of the tunnel. DON WILDMAN: In order to
stop its toxic pollution and to help prevent
disastrous floods, the city came up with a state
of the art engineering stunner. The big pipe will be created
by a tunnel-boring machine. It burrows through the
earth, and at the same time leaves behind it
a concrete lining with the segments
bolted together in seven different sections. In order to lift each piece,
which weigh over a ton, they use a vacuum erector that
sucks the segments up, moves them to the correct position,
and stacks them into place. Once all seven pieces are bolted
together, a segment of the pipe has been completed. Six miles and four
years later it will be finished and
ready to save the city from future catastrophes. Nearly a century ago, Portland
ignored the drugs, booze, and human trafficking spread
throughout its underworld. But today in the same soil
where vice and corruption were the norm, Portland's
subterranean is helping bring the
city into the future by correcting the
mistakes of its past. Throughout the US,
Prohibition unknowingly created an overnight syndicate
filled with booze hounds and bootleggers, gangsters
and corrupt officials. Instead of curbing the drinking,
it created a seedy subculture hidden behind the facades
of soda shops, restaurants, and hotels. And here in Portland the
dry movement actually had the opposite effect. It opened up the floodgates. Prohibition never slowed
down the business of booze, it just sent it underground. Truth is, Portland's hardcore
criminals never had it so good. The sale of moonshine
only fueled the city's other illicit activities. Speakeasies became places to
satisfy your every desire. Drugs, gambling,
prostitution, even to watch a brutal form
of bare knuckle boxing. Boxing is the oldest
sport known to the world, dating back to the Minoan
civilization in 1,500 BC. It's believed that hand-to-hand
combat may go back as far as 3,000 BC to both
ancient Egypt and Sumeria. But the violent
competition is best known from the ancient Olympic
Games where it first appeared in 688 BC. The matches were originally a
way to honor fallen warriors and required the use of thick
leather straps around the palm of the hand. But by the time of Prohibition,
bare knuckle fighting had become a drunken slugfest
where the only rule was anything goes. And in Portland, there was one
place where it all went down. Today this apartment
complex sits on top of what was the
ultimate Fight Club, where only the strong survived. Few people know what
used to happen down here, and it's off limits
to the public. But Loretta Turner,
the building's manager, knows all of its old secrets
and she was giving me exclusive access into this world
of blood, sweat, and probably not tears. This complex used to be the
Kenton Hotel built in 1905. It was created specifically
for the cattle buyers who came from all across the country
to purchase their cattle. But while they stayed in
comfort in the rooms up above, the real action was down below. Wow. So. Jeez, this place
is a huge basement. It is, isn't it? That's amazing. So this is as it was
in its original state? Pretty much, yes. Mm-hmm. DON WILDMAN: In the early 1900s
and throughout Prohibition, just 8 feet beneath
the ground floor was a classic speakeasy
accessible by secret doors. But as time passed and the
Fight Club was shut down, this subterranean space was
locked up and forgotten. What do you know
went on down here? They had bare knuckle
fighting down here. Really? In the 1900s, 1920s. They'd come down here and
had, they have their booze over here, and they had the
boxing in the dirt area. I see. Hundreds of men and women
would cram down here. And though this 6,000
square foot space was large, they'd all be crowded
around the main event. Even in those days, fighters
made their entrance a showcase. This is how they got down
here, from these stairs. DON WILDMAN: Oh, these
are the originals stairs? These are the original stairs. Awesome. They would come down
here from the pub upstairs. OK. But there's a ceiling
there now, huh? LORETTA TURNER: Well, right. But there wasn't at one time. As a matter of fact, I think
you can still see the-- where they had
the door up there. I see. So this was quite a
grand little entrance? LORETTA TURNER: It was. So there's a lot of cheering,
there's a lot of screaming, and down comes the
big star boxers. Right. DON WILDMAN: Although these
fights could draw a crowd, they were held in
secret and were illegal. And for good reason. The fights were often
bloody and ruthless and could last for
as many as 100 rounds or until one of the
boxers was knocked out. But this savage sport wasn't
just for the entertainment of the locals, it was
also good for business. The cattle buyers were
important to Portland's economy, and they wanted to
keep it out of sight of the law and they wanted to provide this
entertainment for these guys, because they were
important people. DON WILDMAN: And with
their rooms right above, it would be easy to come
down for a fight or a drink. But there was one man who the
cattle buyers and the locals all came to the Kenton to see. LORETTA TURNER: Mysterious Billy
Smith was our primary boxer here. He was a mean guy. This one time he
boxed himself out. Basically he couldn't
lift his arms anymore. And his opponent
was still standing. So what he did, rumor has
it, he jumped up and bit off the guy's ear. DON WILDMAN: Oof. It's the event that may have
earned Mysterious Billy Smith the title of dirtiest
fighter of all time. This ultimate fighter's
reputation grew in the 1890s when he became the
welterweight champion. He was fueled by raw rage,
and his rise to the top was helped along by his brutal
tactics of elbowing, thumbing, and gouging his opponents. By the time he came to
Portland in the early 1900s, he was notorious. He fit right in with
a town already overrun with shanghaiers and opium
dens that was teetering on the edge of Prohibition
and the bootlegging explosion. But the dirty fights
weren't the half of it. Amazingly, this
entire neighborhood may have been connected
with underground tunnels. There were other
speakeasies in the area, and locals speculate this
bricked up passageway may have linked up to an
entire underground den of vice. Speakeasies, brothels, gambling,
all leading to this Fight Club. This is the entrance
to the tunnels that went across the street over there. Oh, really? So they had a lot to do
with the operations here? Oh, yeah, definitely. Well, their clientele would come
down through there, you know, avoid all of the hassle
and the law and everything. And so it's a really
secret world down here. Very.
Very. How cool. Less than 100 years
ago in Portland, shanghaiers kidnapped
men and women, opium dens hooked the poor,
sewers polluted the rivers, and bootleggers were running all
the alcohol they could muster. But today, Portland is
working hard to clean up the image of its past. Over the last century, Portland
has changed from America's vice city to America's
city on a hill. The Shanghai tunnels, brothels,
and speakeasies of its past are now sunk beneath an ultra
modern metropolis that's an example for the
rest of the country. But as the people of Portland
move into the 21st century, they should never forget that
their dark past is always there buried just below their feet.
