SOMETIME IN 1922, a letter came in to the city of Pendleton. Enclosed with it was a bill for $45 — for a set of new Goodyear tires.
It seemed the letter writer had come to Pendleton for the annual Pendleton Round-Up and had lost both front tires to the city’s downtown potholes.
The writer also suggested that the city post warning signs at city limits reading, “If you want to experience the joys of a bucking horse, and you own no horse, just drive the streets of Pendleton.”
And indeed, Pendleton’s potholes were famous, both for their size and for their intractability. They seemed hungry; one filled them up with gravel (or, later, asphalt), and a few weeks later they were empty again, as if some night-stalking gravel thief had scooped it all out.
The “underground storefront” in the basement of the Empire Meat Co., in the Empire Block. (Image: F.J.D. John)
The locals got used to it, and tried to take it slow. But for many years, as author Rufus Crabtree recalls, “they created an obstacle course that would put even the best of drivers to the test, and put much hard-earned money in the pockets of the tire dealers.”
It wasn’t until the 1970s and 1980s, when some of Pendleton’s most intractable roadbeds got a complete rebuild, that road crews realized what the problem had been:
Tunnels. The town was honeycombed with them, running a few feet below the ground level, connecting the basements and sidewalk vaults downtown with various other places nearby.
And, that’s how the Pendleton Underground was rediscovered.
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The Pendleton Underground Tours group has furnished and fixed this diorama of a Prohibition-era speakeasy in the space formerly occupied by one. (Image: F.J.D. John)
(Sources: The Pendleton Story, a book by Rufus Crabtree published in 1990 by Ful House Publishing; More on the Pendleton Underground, a book by Pam Severe and Lon Thornburg published in 2003 by Maverick Publications)
Background image is a hand-tinted photo of the then-new railroad lines along the Deschutes River, from a postcard published circa 1915.
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