Surviving Late-1800s / Early-1900s Underground Tunnel System · Chinese Immigrant Labor and Community History · Documented Pattern of Anti-Chinese Discrimination ('Sundowner' Restriction) · Nonprofit Heritage Tour Established 1989
Beneath roughly sixteen blocks of downtown Pendleton runs a system of tunnels and basement rooms that the city's underground tours have interpreted since the nonprofit organization was founded in 1989. The spaces date to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Pendleton was a busy eastern-Oregon town with dozens of bars and brothels.
Much of the underground is tied to Pendleton's Chinese community. Chinese immigrants, many of whom had come to the American West for railroad construction, dug and used parts of the tunnel system and operated businesses below ground. They worked and lived under heavy discrimination: a local 'sundowner' restriction barred them from being on the streets at night, and tour interpretation, drawing on local history, describes cramped underground living quarters where men shared space in shifts. Among the documented operations was Hop Sing's laundry and bathing service.
The tour also covers the town's vice economy. The Shamrock Card Room operated as an 1880s-era bar, gambling continued underground through Prohibition, and an opium den drew a cross-section of the town. Above ground, the 'Cozy Rooms' is interpreted as the city's premier brothel; local accounts associate the madam Stella Darby with arranging Sunday services for workers who were barred from churches elsewhere.
Today the roughly 90-minute guided tour leads visitors through these rooms — the card room, the laundry, the opium den, the Chinese living quarters, and the brothel — presenting Pendleton's underground as a record of immigration, labor, discrimination, and frontier-town vice rather than spectacle.
Sources
- https://www.centraloregondaily.com/destination-oregon/pendleton-oregon-underground-tours-history/article_4566b33e-a83c-11ef-baca-270aae3d466f.html
- https://traveloregon.com/plan-your-trip/guides-tours/tours-guided-trips/pendleton-underground-tours/
- https://www.kgw.com/article/travel/destinations/grants-getaways/grants-getaways-pendleton-underground-walking-tour/283-5c0c40e2-ae31-4b91-bc59-8edfb958b9ec
- https://eastoregonian.com/2025/11/25/tv-special-to-reveal-pendletons-haunted-underside/
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt39045327/
Reported hauntings in the older tunnel sectionsVisitor reports of unease underground
The Pendleton Underground carries a reputation as one of the more reportedly haunted places in the city, a reputation tied to the long and difficult human history of the tunnels rather than to any single confirmed event. Visitors and guides have described unease in the older, more confined sections of the underground, including areas associated with the Chinese community's living quarters.
That reputation drew national attention in 2025. According to the East Oregonian, the Travel Channel's 'Ghost Adventures' filmed a two-part special, 'Buried Souls of Pendleton,' released in late November 2025, after investigating an unexplored section of the tunnel system in collaboration with Pendleton Underground Tours. The program framed its investigation around the town's vice history and claimed to document paranormal activity, including the use of lidar scanning.
The specific paranormal claims belong to the television production and to visitor reports, not to the documentary record the tour itself maintains. The site's lasting significance is historical: it preserves the spaces where Chinese immigrants lived and worked under discrimination and where the town's saloon-and-brothel economy operated. The hauntings are best understood as a modern overlay on that history, and the underground's value lies first in what it documents about the people who actually lived there.
Media Appearances
- Ghost Adventures: Buried Souls of Pendleton (TV special, 2025)
