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| history of oregon | |
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The Portland Underground, or '''The Shanghai Tunnels''' as they are more commonly known, are a group of passages running underneath Old Town/ Chinatown down to the central downtown section of Portland , Oregon . The tunnels originally connected the Basement s of many downtown Hotel s and Bar s, and they eventually wound their way to the waterfront of the Willamette River . They were mostly used in the late 19th Century to mid 20th Century to Kidnap or "shanghai" (the origin of the phrase "to be Shanghaied ") unsuspecting laborers and sell them as slaves to waiting ships at the waterfront. Victims were drugged or knocked out, taken through one of the trap doors (or '' Deadfalls '', and held in a prison cell while they waited to be shipped off. This earned Portland the reputation as the most dangerous Port on the West Coast, if not the world, in the early 1900s , as well as the nicknames "Unheavenly City" and "Forbidden City." Later, during Prohibition , they were inhabited by bars that literally went underground to sell booze and good times. There is some question as to the accuracy of this content. |