UNDERGROUND BROWNTOWN: THE TUNNELS URBAN MYTH

By  Juan Montoya

For as long as many of us can remember, there has been talk of tunnels existing under the city in downtown Brownsville.

Stories have been written about this and the old timers are usually quoted describing the tunnel system they say that one time connected the the Immaculate Conception Cathedral with the old convent since torn down. Usually, it was just that, stories.

Most of them were discounted as tales made up by people who could not prove them. The water table is too high for tunnels, the naysayers would argue. You can't even have a basement. If you go three feet, you'll hit water, they said.                                                                                        But as the renovation of Market Square downtown began, some workers started to see full basements as they tore up the floor boards covering the original construction.

At the San Fernando Building which was constructed in 1877, the gaping hole left when workers removed the floor boards placed there by subsequent tenants showed that there is a basement on the corner building. Photos of the gap indicate that there is a walled basement under the floor. Are there basements under the rest of the buildings?

And just across the street, at the old tannery which is now occupied by George Ramirez's Half Moon Saloon, a large underground square people thought was the entrance to a tunnel was uncovered when renovations took place. But in that case, it was a cavity to cure cattle hides before shipping them to customers in the East.

But the talk of tunnels hasn't stopped. Just recently, a property owner near Market Square and his work crew came upon an opening under the building whose placement didn't make any sense.                                                                                                                                                "Not only does this building have a basement, it also has an opening that goes under the building and away from it for some 20 feet before it's walled off with brick," he said. "As a basement it makes no sense, and it leads away from the street."                                                                                                                                              The same land owner said that he had a friend in Matamoros whose father used to tell them about the old days when the priest of the Señora del Refugio Cathedral used to visit his father whose

home was on one side of Plaza Juarez. "He said the priest would come up the tunnel and have dinner with them some nights," he recalled. "If you stop to think about it, in those days there were still marauding Indians and bandits around. So, for security, the tunnels made sense.

Old timers say that a tunnel leading from the cathedral in Brownsville used to emerge on the river. Likewise, at Casa Mata, a walled off tunnel also leads to the Rio Grande on the Mexican side. Others even say that a tunnel existed under the river. That might be stretching it a bit, though.

There are fresh-water wells as differentiated from cisterns in many properties in the downtown are and the historical district in central-west Brownsville. Cisterns were used to collect water runoff while wells were dug for drinking and other household chores.

By now, if there were tunnels at one time, they have probably collapsed and walling them off makes sense. But just the possibility that someone might have built a connecting system under the city leads one to imagine whether the old-time residents of Brownsville constructed them for security and safety in those wild days of banditry and Indian raids.