Everything's Heavy Underground
Every school has a certain amount of urban legends, right? You'll hear the occasional tale of a group of guys pushing a vending machine off the roof of one of the dorms, or maybe a story of a student's mysterious death one night. Most of the time, only the littlest grains of truth back up these stories, but here's one that's very true: the underground network of steam tunnels that interconnect most of the buildings on Tech's campus.
This type of thing is also incredibly interesting to me, even though I'd never actually go out and do any exploring of these tunnels. For one thing, getting caught prowling around down there can be grounds for expulsion (or at least a hefty JR if you live on campus), and in the worst cases, death. But perhaps that just adds to the mystique of the tunnels. They're off-limits to the ordinary person, and they represent a frontier of the unknown, a dark underground to the familiar campus we know.
That's probably why there have been bands of "tunnel rats" that have been exploring these tunnels for decades now, and over the years have established websites and guides to VT's steam tunnels. Again, I do NOT advocate actually going out and doing this yourself, but these sites are still fascinating, especially the sections that talk about old basements and abandoned parts of old campus buildings, and those that describe Stroubles Creek (which now runs under downtown Blacksburg).
A few sections of the sites have pictures detailing their exploits, so give them a once-over, and then start dreaming about your own urban exploration fantasies.
UPDATE (6/15/05): After being contacted by the owner of the former mindtrap.net/tunnels site, I can now direct you to the freshly-updated www.explorevt.net. It's got all the original tunnel info, plus a bunch of interesting background information on some of the Tech buildings, as well as cool pictures of secret goings-on at Tech. The guy who runs it is a current student as of this update, so there should be updates to the site for a few years to come.
Fascinating!
This is really cool Bret - I always wondered if what I had heard about these tunnels was true. You should do a series - is the library really sinking, slowly into the ground? is the drillfield sinking too? were the windows in the chemistry building really designed to represent the periodic table? You could call it answering the legends or something. Well, maybe you don't have time for all the research, but anyway this was really neat! Thanks for sharing!
That's a great idea, Heidi! I'll see if I can find any leads on any of those other VT mysteries.
the last two people who were caught received judicial referals.