appendices
Appendix A: Map of currently operational tunnels (see Maps)
Appendix B: Map of currently operational & defunct tunnels (see Maps)
Appendix C: Images of possible access points (see Images)
Appendix D: Personal possible of exploration
Across Arkansas State University’s history of over a century, many people have taken the journey underground. Several of these individuals have written about their experiences. Rice’s (2010) account is omitted in this appendix due to its length, but an archived version can be found in the References section.
From Topix user, curious:
From Underground Ozarks user, droog:
From Topix user, lala:
From Topix user, LXA-84-87:
From ASU alumnus, Paul Rice:
From Topix user, turbodog62:
Appendix B: Map of currently operational & defunct tunnels (see Maps)
Appendix C: Images of possible access points (see Images)
Appendix D: Personal possible of exploration
Across Arkansas State University’s history of over a century, many people have taken the journey underground. Several of these individuals have written about their experiences. Rice’s (2010) account is omitted in this appendix due to its length, but an archived version can be found in the References section.
From Topix user, curious:
- I also know for a fact there were tunnels under ASU, because when I worked there in the 80's, 11pm to 7am, I was well aware of them. Once the elevator in the old nursing building took me down into the very bottom floor and the door opened to total darkness, did not take me long to push that button and get the heck out of there. Also in Lab Science building there were gaping holes in the wall in the basement and you could see into the tunnels--however, it was the roaches that were about 5 inches long and had wings that would keep me from exploring any of those tunnels. (Tunnels under Jonesboro, 2015)
From Underground Ozarks user, droog:
- I originally found the tunnels after a friend of mine in Memphis told me about some tunnels at Christian Brothers University. This friend went on to tell me that his older brother had been to similar tunnels at ASU - Jonesboro. Doing a little research, I found the tunnels. Although the tunnels aren't as cool as they used to be (in the past, you could enter the basements of several buildings), this is still a cool site.
- To enter the tunnels, you need to find the Dean Ellis library and then walk to the North-Eastern most corner of this building. On the sidewalk here, you should see a rusted metal door. The door, which lifts quite easily (you can pry your hand under it) leads down into the tunnels. Once down in the tunnels, there's about 2+ hours of exploring to be done. Taking you across the center of campus, the tunnels consist of various corridors, The Grated Chamber (a room the previously housed a boiler system), 2 cylindrical tunnels (one of which I haven't yet explored), and the entrance to one of the newest buildings on campus (which I wouldn't suggest attempting).
- This like any other campus tunnel system can get you in trouble if caught. Explore at your own risk.
- Oh, I forgot to mention. The thing that makes this campus tunnel a little more interesting is the fact that there are no lights. Be sure to bring several flashlights.
- Also, I would suggest entering from the tunnel mentioned before, but exiting from the hatch in the Library outdoor break area. I plan to make a map soon, to help you guys with the campus. (droog, 2010)
From Topix user, lala:
- When I was at ASU in early 90's, Bill Clinton came to campus and spoke in front of the library. I know for a fact the secret service used those tunnels under ASU to covertly get him in and out of there with little notice and commotion. There are a lot of tunnels under ASu- not sure about elsewhere. (Tunnels under Jonesboro, 2015)
From Topix user, LXA-84-87:
- Actually spent some time in the tunnels as did some other Greeks. We accessed them from the man holes that were in the sidewalk next to the computer lab. Only buildings that I know personally that could be accessed were Wilson and the business building. The tunnels were sealed for President Clinton's visit to ASU. Hope this is helpful. (ASU Tunnel System? 2014)
From ASU alumnus, Paul Rice:
- I first discovered the tunnels at ASU when they began building a new Science building on campus. When the basement was dug, we noticed that there was a large concrete tube, rectangular in shape, that traversed the basement pit. It was left in tact as the pit was excavated, and then finally broken in half, exposing the tunnels on either side of the pit.
- My buddies and I gained entrance by jumping the fence around the construction site and dropping into the pit under the cover of darkness. Here's a hint if you ever decide to do that. Make sure you scope out the presence of rebar before doing this. My friend was almost impaled by this little stunt. Fortunately, we only got a few scratches.
- Our point of entry was on the west side of what now stands as the Sciences building, under the sidewalk to the east of the Communications building. At this point we are nearly all the way to the south of the tunnel system.
- The southernmost point lies under the agri-sciences building in a room we called "The Grated Chamber". This is the only true underground room in the system, and we believe it to be the original boiler room. There is no equipment there today, just an empty chamber with a slanted floor. In the south west corner, where the floor slopes down, there is a drain, and we know that a few hundred feet to the south of this building there is a drainage canal along the railroad tracks. So this is probably where any runoff in the tunnels goes too. This is also the lowest point in the floor plan.
- Along the south wall of the Grated Chamber there is a stairwell that leads into the ceiling toward a door. The door is lock, and we believe welded shut from the outside. We do think it is part of a wall inside the Agri Sciences building, but we can't locate it, so it must be covered by a new layer of cinder block above.
- At the north end of the chamber there is a grated gateway into the tunnel itself, hence the name The Grated Chamber.
- The tunnel itself is a typically rectangular shaft. The roof of which is actually the sidewalk above. The sidewalk leads from the Agri Sciences building north, between the library and computer services buildings to the center yard in the middle of campus. Underneath it's all tunnelway.
- At the southeast corner of the library, the tunnel makes a roughly 45 degree branch. This branch runs diagonally underneath the library and museum toward the mathematics building across the street. In the middle of this rather long tunnel, there is a large pipe that disects the tunnel. It's probably four feet or so in diameter, and you must crawl under it on your back in order to proceed. It's hot, extremely hot. I wouldn't advise crawling over. Just accept the fact you're going to get muddy and crawl under.
- When the tunnel reaches the street at the other end of the yard, there is a large square metal hatch in the ceiling. Topside, you'll see this rather clearly. It's a concrete pad just south of the administration building. However the tunnel continues across the street toward the mathematics building. Once across the street, it makes a sharp angled turn back south along the side walk and ends at a point which is where the old field house used to stand. This gymnaseum eventually housed the telecommunications offices where the telephone and campus cable tv system were operated from, but was later torn down. I recall that there was a hatch in the tunnel ceiling below one of the technical rooms of the telecom office. Standing below you could hear the phone equipment switching calls. The hatch was a double wooden door, and a crack allowed light, air and sound through. You could also hear the campus operator giving directory information at the switchboard from there. This is usually how most tunnelers were caught. The switchboard operator would hear them laughing down below and call the campus police.
- Back to the southeast corner of the library. If you continued north to the northeast corner, you would find the tunnel branches again. Due east, to the right, a short tunnel extension led along under the sidewalk along the front side of the English building. It didn't get as far as Caraway road, and we estimate that it stops dead center in front of the main door of the English building. There are some pipes disappearing into the wall, continueing eastward, so we suspect that this might be a point that was walled off. It's the only branch of the tunnel that doesn't eventually access a building.
- If you proceeded to the left, you made a thirty degree or so angle northwest for a few hundred feet, then turned due north for a bit. This is because the old administration building used to sit in this center yard before it burned down in the early 1900s, and the tunnels apparantly skirted around it.
- As the tunnel contines northward, it runs along the west side of Wilson Hall, again, all below the sidewalk. The sidewalk that is in place today, however, is not the original sidewalk, but it does make a rather good attempt at being on top of the tunnel. At the southwest corner of Wilson Hall, you'll see a manhole cover in a concrete slab just a few feet off the actual sidewalk. That is one of the access points.
- There is a sidewalk that runs between the Admin building and Wilson. It runs just above one of the newer tunnel extensions. This new section is odd in that it is a tube, rather than a rectangular shaft, and is only about four feet in height, so you have to crawl on your knees to get through it. If you don't know to look for it, you'll miss it completely. A good way to know it is there is to look for the pipes and guages along the wall. It is next to them. This tube also has the advantage of still being lit by a working light bulb system. The rest of the tunnels lighting system was vandalized to the point that it is unusable and remains so to this day. Tunnel workers must use flashlights constantly.
- The round tube tunnel leads into the basement of the admin building, just below the president's office. If you go down the central stairway in admin you'll find a mechanical room behind the stairwell. Look through the window and on the far wall you'll see a round hatch in a round concrete facing. That's the Admin Building access point.
- Continuing from the northwest corner of Wilson, the tunnel turns about 25 degrees northeast, leading toward the student center across the street. At the point where the tunnel is about to cross the street, there is another, equally odd tunnel which turns back toward Wilson Hall. This tunnel is a rectangular shaft, but has an arched ceiling overhead, rather than a flat sidewalk. This tunnel leads up to just underneath the front doors of Wilson. If you stand facing Wilson at the main entrance, to your left (east) you'll see beyond the bushes that there is an opening in the ground. It is a square shaft aproximately five feet on each side, and has a ventilation screen around the top edges. The top covering comes off, but is usually locked in place with master locks. If you were to succeed in opening it, it drops straight down to the floor of the mechanical room in the basement. However, there are a number of pipes, cables, and what look like high voltage wires that cross this opening, so I wouldn't suggest using it for an entrance without a lot of study first. It would require rapelling straight to the floor in any case as there is no wall around it below. Very "Mission Impossible 2" stuff there.
- This same mech room is where the tunnel under the front doors leads to. In the basement of Wilson, you'll find a mechanical room with a large black door. Look in the window and you'll see this room. On the far wall you'll see a regular door about three feet off the ground. This door covers the access point. On the other side of the door is a brick wall which used to close off the tunnels, but at some point it had been broken through. Apparantly the school decided at one time to seal off the tunnels from the buildings, then had to open them all back up to allow for technology to catch up in the form of telephone and computer wiring.
- Back to the sidewalk in front of Wilson. The tunnel crosses the road diagonally on a line toward the main entrance of the Reng Center. There used to be two dormitories on this hill, with a fountain between them, and it appears the tunnel once led up to the fountain. We suspect that the tunnel then branched northward and to the east and west to either dorm. Both buildings were destroyed when the Reng Center was built. The tunnel ends just to the west of the main entrance, a few feet south of the sidewalk which paralells the cafeteria.
- Topside, if you walk westward from the Reng Center toward the Saudi Arabian Customs Center, you'll find the mother of all manhole covers just to the north of the sidewalk. This puppy is nothing to bark at. It is a good six feet in diameter, and takes three people to open with crow bars. It is in the roof of an underground chamber, and we never managed to find out what was down there. But we do know this chamber is next to the basement kitchens below the cafeteria. There is a companion manhole cover just around the corner of the building near the loading docks.
- We've seen pictures of the north end of campus and proved the existence of a boiler room at the north end in what is now an open field just north of the Reng Center parking lot, but we can't find any topside entrances to the tunnels in this field. When the northern boiler plant was destroyed, it was covered quite efficiently. This steam plant was across the street from what is now Kays Hall. This field used to be where the married housing was located, but the trailers were later moved to the south east corner of campus.
- Going back to the Grated Chamber, the tunnels extended eastward across to the biological and lab sciences building. In the basement of lab sciences there are two class rooms which have doors in their outer walls, aproximately three feet off the floor. These were once entry points to the tunnels. The western entry point is no longer accessable. When the new building was put in place, this entry was sealed, unconnected to the new building. But the eastern tunnel goes from the lab sciences building east, underneath Caraway Road, and leads to what used to serve at the Physical Plant. This old World War II aircraft hanger on campus has since been torn down and replaced with a parking lot, but there was an entry point inside at one time. This building also held the purchasing offices. We had tried to cross under Caraway using this extension once before, but there was too much mud in the tunnel floor, and the construction workers stored slabs of broken concrete, aparantly the former tunnel walls themselves in this system when they broke through years before to build the basement of lab sciences.
- I have heard that there are some large drain tunnels which run along the western side of campus, but give no building access. I do not believe there is any building access or any other tunnel system east of Caraway Road, which means the Twin Towers are not connected to the tunnel system.
- Interesting note about the dorms on campus. Along the west side of the Reng Center there is a street on which four buildings once stood. The first is now the Saudi Arabian Customs Center which I referred to earlier. This building used to be a womens dorm and was named Fowler Hall. Next to it is a more modern dorm called University Hall. A third building once stood north of that; Caraway Hall, but has since been torn down. And the final building at the northernmost end of the street is Kays Hall. All four buildings were womens dorms, and if you take the first letter of each building's name, from south to north, Fowler, University, Caraway, Kays, you spell the acronym F-U-C-K. Tell me that wasn't intentional.
- Walk along the sidewalks from south to north through the center of campus. When you spot a manhole cover with a crossbar and padlock, you'll know it's an entry into the steam tunnels below.
- At the northeast corner of the library you'll find a square hatch in the sidewalk. This hatch is hinged from below, and you'll notice there is a small hole in one corner of the hatch. All you need is a motorcycle battery, a pair of jumper cables, and a long stemmed screwdriver to gain access here. Stick the screwdriver into the small hole and allow it to make contact with the bottom. Connect one side of the battery to the screwdriver with jumper cables, and touch the outer rim of the hatch with the other side of the circuit. POP. The selenoid below will open and the hatch will pop up slightly. You're in. We sat in amazement one day watching the physical plant workers drive a truck up the sidewalk, pop it's hood, and open the hatch in this way. All other ground level access is shut off with padlocked manhole covers. But now that you know the secret.... (Rice, n.d.)
From Topix user, turbodog62:
- Talked to an ASU employee that said he had been in some, said that's where they run their computer network now. Tunnels carried steam under pressure and are full of asbestos, said some are near 10' wide. He said old CWL building used to be a steam-plant so maybe tunnels downtown? (Tunnels under Jonesboro, 2015)