TAMPA, Fla. – Below Ybor City in the Tampa area exists a series of tunnels, though most residents have likely never seen them — or even know they’re there.
For decades, the tunnels — an estimated two or three in total — are rumored to have been used for smuggling alcohol throughout the area during Prohibition.
Recommended Videos
Given that Tampa was once infamous for its mafia families, that’s not a baseless guess.
While the city has no maps of the tunnel systems, some people believe that one of them extends all the way to the Port of Tampa.
But nowadays, there’s little way to know for sure.
City officials told News 6 that one of the last known access points for the tunnels — under a Blue Ribbon grocery store near 7th Avenue and 15th Street — burned down in 2001. In its place now sits a parking lot.
However, another entry point was uncovered back in 2018 during a construction project near an old bottling factory, according to FOX 13.
Shortly thereafter, researchers with the University of South Florida came out to map the tunnels while they were still open and available.
According to one such researcher — Dr. Lori Collins with USF’s Center for Digital Heritage — the tunnels barely gave them room to stand.
“These are quite substantial,” she told News 6. “I mean, you can stand up and maybe bend over a little bit, depending on how tall you are. But you can certainly travel through them.”
Using a type of laser scanning, the researchers created partial 3D maps of the tunnel, showing its layout as compared to the nearby dig site and buildings.
[STORY CONTINUES BELOW]
During their exploration, they even came across a spring inside, which was documented roughly a century ago.
“When we went into the one tunnel — all the way to the back end of it — we knew that there had been mapped an artesian well nearby,” Collins explained. “And we did find where it was bubbling up inside the actual tunnel space today.”
But the question remains: what were these tunnels actually used for?
All of the bottles that researchers found at the site might indicate the smuggling theory is true, but Rodney Kite-Powell with the Tampa Bay History Center said that’s likely not the case.
“During Prohibition, Ybor City was kind of wide open, and the police were all corrupted by the organized crime that was here,” he said. “So to go through the effort of moving alcohol under the tunnels would have been not really necessary.”
While other theories posit that the tunnels could have been used to transport illegal immigrants, Kite-Powell stated that there wasn’t any way to know for sure.
The tunnel at the Blue Ribbon grocery store might have been used to transport money, though.
“Allegedly, that tunnel connected to one of the first cigar factories — Ybor Cigar Factory — for whom the city’s named,” Kite-Powell said. “And so it may have been a way to move cash around in the very early years before Sydney because it was kind of lawless.”
Meanwhile, the tunnel that USF researchers examined might have been used as something less-than-savory.
“They likely were originally built as sewer tunnels, the first kind of proper sewer system, and they’re a little bit smaller,” he explained. “And then the one that I’ve actually been in: that curious system was abandoned in the late 1900s or so, maybe 1920s.”
Regardless, there are no entry points available to the public, so these tunnels will remain a mystery for the foreseeable future.
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: