Lab Sciences East ↔ Caraway Road
This site plan shows north 'pointing' to the right. 1966 site plans for the construction of the Lab Sciences East (LSE) building. Image cropped and emphasis added for effect: yellow highlight indicates tunnels assumed to still remain; red highlight indicates portion which was demolished and sealed. See Agriculture ↔ Library for more recent detail on this portion of tunnel.
(Lab Sciences East, 1966)
(Lab Sciences East, 1966)
From the Agriculture ↔ Library tunnel section once extended an additional section which existed below Lab Sciences East and West; parts of this portion were demolished and sealed during the construction of Lab Sciences West in 1986 (Lab Sciences West, 1986). According to this document, the portion extending from Lab Sciences East to Caraway Road was left undisturbed. The utility map shows that the existing tunnel extends from the eastern edge of Lab Sciences East to the eastern edge of Caraway Road (Campus Utilities, 2018). The construction shortly left an opening in the tunnel while foundation excavations were underway; this is where Paul Rice originally gained access to the tunnel system (Rice, n.d.). According to Rice, there are two classrooms in the basement of Lab Sciences East which have “doors in their outer walls, [approximately] three feet off the floor,” the western one having been sealed after the demolition of its respective tunnel section. The current status of the access point at the east door is unknown. The western door can be found in Lab Sciences East room LSE-112 and the eastern door in LSE room LSE-106, both in the basement (Lab Sciences East, 1966).
These are the accounts of Paul Rice (n.d.) on the status of the tunnel section during his exploration:
No material could be found on the status or history of any portion extending east of Caraway Road.
[1] The hangar facilities appear on Campus Map (1997), but were torn down before Rice’s post
These are the accounts of Paul Rice (n.d.) on the status of the tunnel section during his exploration:
- [T]he 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[1] 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.
No material could be found on the status or history of any portion extending east of Caraway Road.
[1] The hangar facilities appear on Campus Map (1997), but were torn down before Rice’s post