I've been wanting to do a post forever on the 8th Street Tunnel in Kansas City but just haven't gotten around to it. The problem with trying to juggle seven kids with a job with a half billion dollar budget and over 750 employees is that it takes away time to keep this website up. The reason why I haven't trashed it is because I love documenting Kansas City history and making it so others who have the nerdiness of myself can waste time gathering useless information. I am hopelessly optimistic that some of the Tik-Tok generation might stop watching incredibly stupid videos to learn something.....
Did you know there was a tunnel from the West Bottoms to downtown Kansas City which until the automobile was the main way for people to get from our founding agriculture history to our banking and housing centers downtown? If you go back and look at old posts about "Kansas City Before Freeways" and "1947 Riverfront Master Plan Wanted Another Freeway" you can see pictures with the tunnel in the posts. I went ahead and pulled them out of the post and posted them below. I will note that I have started adding a watermark or identifier in the pictures because some buttheads take the material and post it without crediting the source. I don't mind sharing this material but if I take the time to create content please have the decency to post the source. Behind every blogger there is someone who's giving up time watching "The X-Files" or Charles Bronson butt-kicking movies to create material. If you would like to see more, I encourage you to share the page and posts. It's not for my ego but I might be more inclined to contribute content if people like what I am posting. I understand now why bloggers fade away because the motivation fades unless people like what is posted. Anyways I will digress from blogger self-pity to talk about a rather awesome part of history that I have seen.
I've previously posted pictures which showed the 8th Street Tunnel. In the first picture, one would be over the Missouri River looking southwest towards the West Bottoms. The tunnel is within the red circle. This was taken before the Buck O'Neil (Broadway) Bridge was built and people still used the old Hannibal Bridge.
In the picture below, it's really easy to see the trestle leading into the tunnel. This is looking southeast towards downtown if one was hovering over the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers. This was taken before any freeways or I-35 were built.
I was fortunate to be able to get into the tunnel as part of the new Buck O'Neil Bridge project because when I-35 was built through the bluff on the west side of downtown, the tunnel was severed and closed. The team working on the environmental study needed to figure out if the tunnel cap was in the right place or if the proposed new direct connection from I-35 to go north would cut into the tunnel. I, of course, jumped at the opportunity to get into the tunnel and explore it because I'm a different level of geek....
Maybe someday I will have a follow up posts with some material I have from other sources about the tunnel but essentially there are two tunnels. The first tunnel was a brick lined tunnel with a steep grade which was built in the 1800's. At some point, the tunnel was deemed too steep and a second tunnel was excavated and built within the original tunnel in the 1900's.
If you are downtown and have ever wondered why we have a weird park/pedestrian plaza on 8th Street west of Broadway and a fountain there, it was because that was where the tunnel opened. This area was repurposed as a non-car plaza thing when the streetcar was removed. I never understood why that part of downtown was the way it was until I pulled up the 1925 Tuttle Ayers atlas and saw where it came out. I would show more on that but I can't find the tile of that area online easily from that atlas. I may have to go visit my friends at McClure Engineering Company who have a couple of original copies and take a picture from their original atlases if I ever get around to a follow up post.
The picture below if from what I am guessing is a 1944ish aerial picture I found laying around in a file drawer at City Hall. The trestle to the tunnel is within the red circle.
I went ahead and zoomed in on the picture above. The inter-city viaduct (which became I-70) is in purple and Broadway would be where the orange line is.
The tunnel entrance is in a parking garage. I don't feel bad sharing it because the parking garage was probably built with TIF and us taxpayers subsidized it so we have a moral claim that it's a public asset so I don't have any qualms about posting it. You can see the brick tunnel lining in amongst the parking garage HVAC.
Entering the tunnel, one can see the top of the original, steeper tunnel. This is about 200 feet after the entrance. The floor of this tunnel in the picture is the top of the newer, less steep tunnel.
The brick tunnel liner for the original tunnel is steeper than the top of the new tunnel so vertical clearance gets shorter the further one goes into the tunnel. It's probably 10 feet at the entrance and then goes to about 5 feet before the new tunnel top ends which the picture below shows.
The brick lining of the original tunnel is still in great shape and shows the workmanship of people in the late 19th century.
When you get to the end of the brick tunnel, there is a ladder which one has to take to get to the lower tunnel. As a farm kid, I had no problem climbing from the edge of the roof between the tunnels to the ladder to get below due to my years of climbing over and on top of things. Once I got to the lower tunnel, it was a cesspool of mud created by decades of water infiltration with the fines of the clay at the bottom but you can see the constructed top of the newer tunnel with its power source for the trolley. Someone did install lights at some point but you can see the brick on the sides from the original tunnel and then the roof built for the newer tunnel.
Here is a zoomed in shot on the roof of the newer tunnel which had some steel beams with some heavy concrete cross beams. You can see the concrete starting to deteriorate with the deposits creating stalactites. The electrical source system is still partially in place in this picture.
The picture below is looking west towards the cap of the tunnel which was constructed when I-35 was built on the west side of downtown. Here you can see the aluminum ladder onc has to climb to get from the upper tunnel to the lower tunnel. Note the solid concrete cap MoDOT built to block the tunnel off from the interstate.
Here's some calcified remains of the streetcar rails.
I'm not sure exactly what this is in the picture below but I am assuming the brick is the base of the original, steeper tunnel and this shows the excavation to build the newer, less steep tunnel.
This shot looks to me like they drilled steel rebar into the limestone to act as a foundation for the original tunnel to provide a stable footing for the brick to protect the integrity of the excavation. I am guessing that when they built the new tunnel, they just blasted down and left these anchors for the brick as they existed.
Here is what I think might be my best shot showing the new tunnel. The electrical system for the streetcar is still in place.
In the lower tunnel there was some kind of steel material which I assumed held the rail tracks in place. It was full of eroded clay fines which made a "goupy" surface but seemed to permanently petrify the streetcar tracts and ties.
I am still amazed wood is able to survive 80+ years of sitting in a contained and subterranean environment. This picture also shows a concrete footing built for the lower tunnel.
One thing that struck me from the concrete in the lower tunnel is the pattern on the concrete. It didn't look smooth like plywood was used to form the concrete walls. It looked like the tunnel contractors used 1x4s to form the concrete walls. This would have taken a ton of time vs using 4x8 plywood or metal forms that they use today.
At some point, I am guessing about Washington Street, the lower tunnel ends and a pile of fill was thrown in when they capped it. At this point, I didn't feel like climbing above the mound of dirt to find the end. The air quality was trash and my boots were muddy enough, I didn't want to ruin a pair of pants in addition to boots so I didn't bother climbing any further.
It's pretty amazing the destructive and also how good the preservative power of water is. The next picture shows the top of the new tunnel and how the steel attachment is still kind of there after 80+ years.
As 0ur group left, I got some more pictures. Where the original tunnel ended and the lower tunnel had enough vertical clearance, the builders started building cross beams for the room. I wonder why they left a floor other than they used it for maintenance staff to service the electrical for the streetcar. The picture below is from where one can access the tunnels and shows the beams built for the roof of the newer, less steep tunnel.
I find the workmanship of our ancestors amazing. There were a couple of locations where the brickwork was just amazing. I am guessing this was a spot where maintenance staff could wait if a train was coming.
Lastly, I took a picture at the entrance showing the walkway DST or whatever they are called now built to get to the tunnel from a parking garage which shows the magnificence of this tunnel and Kansas City's history.
So folks I hope you appreciate posts like this. I have so many things going on but I find this stuff amazingly interesting and I thank God for a farm kid from central Illinois gets to do what I do and see things like this. I hope to find more time to do more regular posting because Kansas City is so awesome and I want to make sure future generations have an appreciation for it. Lastly I can't express to you all how much I love this city and it's history. This is an amazing place to live and raise a family and it truly is the world's largest small town.