Years after a secret network of tunnels was discovered beneath Tampa, its purpose remains a mystery.
Experts speculate that Ybor City’s underground passages may have been used to smuggle immigrants, alcohol and even Mafia money.
“These are pretty significant,” says Dr. Lori Collins of the University of South Florida’s Digital Heritage Center. He told News 6.
“That means you can stand up or bend over a little bit depending on your height, but you can definitely get through.”
Everything about the tunnels (estimated to be two or three in total) remains a mystery and authorities are still working to unravel it.
One of the last access points to the tunnels burned down in 2001, but the city was stunned when another access point was discovered during construction near an old bottling plant in 2018.
Researchers used this entrance to penetrate the network and attempt to map the vast system, including discovering a spring within.
USF Libraries Digital Heritage Center
“When we got deep into the tunnel, we knew there was an artesian well nearby,” Collins told the outlet, “and today we discovered where that well is flowing within the actual tunnel space.”
They also uncovered a large number of bottles, which researchers say may prove the tunnels were used to smuggle booze during Prohibition — a reasonable theory considering the city’s notorious past as a city ruled by the Mafia.
Another theory is that the tunnels were used to safely transport money during the city’s “lawless” times, Rodney Kite Powell of the Tampa Bay History Center told the outlet.
The now-burned tunnel once connected the Ybor Cigar Factory, for which the city was named.
A less exciting theory is that the tunnels are simply a primitive sewer system.
“These were probably built originally as sewer tunnels, the first real sewer systems, and they’re a little small,” Kait-Powell explained.
“And this strange system that I experienced first-hand was abolished in the late 1900s, maybe the 1920s.”
Researchers have created 3D renderings of the tunnel, but its total length is not yet known, although some speculate it could stretch three miles to the Port of Tampa.
