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                           Through passages darkly

Obligatory Sidebar Links

abandoned places [1]
Dark Passage [2]
Hudson Valley Ruins [3]



I came across serveral sites that document abandoned places in the United
States—mostly industrial locations or institutions no longer used or long
forgotten by previous owners, and the brave (or foolhardy) souls that now
examine and document such places.

[4] [5] It brought me back many years to FAU (Florida Atlantic University)
[6], which has an interesting history—it used to be an airport [7] back in
the sixties (in the image linked to, the old runway system is in blue (which
are now used as a main road and parking lots—one rather loooooong parking
lot) and the current Boca Raton Commercial Airport (which is an active
airport) is in green). In the 60s it was converted to a graduate level
university and in 1984, it opened up to undergraduates. I started there in
1987 (and thus utterly dating myself, but this is good, as the Statues of
Limitations have now run out) and several years into my tenured undergrad
career, some friends and I went spelunking into the FAU Tunnel System.

Now, this being Florida you would think that being only a few feet above sea
level there wouldn't be a tunnel system, but lo, there was. Next to the
Biology building was a set of stairs leading down to some double doors, with
just enough of a gap to let a large screw driver in to pop the door open. So
one night, about four or five of us grabbed some flashlights, a large screw
driver, and proceeded to decend into the depths of FAU.

The tunnel system [8] connects all the buildings on campus (or at least we
theorized—we didn't actually explore the entire system). We entered near the
Biology building (the red dot on the linked map) and proceeded south (down,
like on all maps). Along the tunnels were large water pipes (about half of
which were hot to the touch) and smaller ones carrying electric, phone and
network connections. When we came to the first T-interection, we turned left
(east) which would lead us to the Administration building. Halfway down the
tunnel we came across some large disks set in the floor, with some pipes
sticking straight out. We were pretty sure they were presure plates connected
to pumps, should the tunnel system flood. We carefully avoided stepping on
the disks but three quarters the way down one of us stumbled and triggered
one of the pumps, which cause a rather large ruckess. We turned, and admist
shouts of “Run away! Run away!” fled back down towards the main north/south
tunnel.

We turned south again, and kept heading south, past the other left tunnel
towards Administration (we wanted to avoid the plates). We found evidance of
prior spelunkers in the graffiti lining the walls (one definitely dated to
1976). The going was not that bad until we hit the southern junction, which
proved quite difficult to navigate as we had to climb over and under some
large pipes. We ended up heading to the left (west) towards the University
Center.

Now, at the time we weren't all that sure where we were so at the next
manhole cover we found (above us) we stole a peek. On the map, the lavender
dot shows where we popped up and at the time, we could see the on-campus
Police Station. Not good. We ducked down and got the manhole cover mostly
back into place and we kept heading west.

As we progressed towards the University Center it was clear that we were
hitting one of the oldest sections of the tunnel system—it was getting
dirtier and smaller so that by the time we reached the end we were all
doubled over and nearly dying from the heat.

We turned back east, climbed over and under at the intersection and kept
going east and ended up inside the electrical room of the Humanities
Building. Not much left at that end of the tunnel system we headed back,
bypassed the entrance near the Biology building and again headed east towards
the Computer Science and Engineering building (where we all hung out, being
Computer Science majors). We could tell this was recent construction by the
large size and relatively cleanliness of this part of the system. There was
some debate about contining on towards the end of this particular section but
since we had already spend several hours down in the tunnels it was decided
that we should exit the system, head home and get some rest.

[1] http://home2.planetinternet.be/henk/
[2] http://www.darkpassage.com/
[3] http://www.hudsonvalleyruins.org/
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2002/04/16/fau.ov.png
[5] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2002/04/16/fau.png
[6] http://www.fau.edu/
[7] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2002/04/16/fau.runway.png
[8] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2002/04/16/fau.tunnel.png

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