Underground Tunnels in Fort Collins
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
In 1896, Fort Collins became a dry country town, prohibiting the use and drinking of alcohol. Prohibition caused an essential impact on the city as most temperance acts do. Crime increased and made use of city planning and architecture. In Oldtown Fort Collins, a network tunnel runs beneath the city; these tunnels were used as storage for local building and shops and used for transportation. In the early day of prohibition, dating around the early 1900s, bootleggers would distribute and sell alcohol in the tunnels allowing risky and illegals business to boom underground. It's as criminal as it sounds, these tunnels are still used today to store merchandise and stock for some shops like Walrus Ice Cream store, but most entrances remained closed. If interested in exploring these underground network, Fort Collins ghost tours, a local business that promotes the local and public history of buildings along with its haunted past allow a tour of these tunnels.
Images
Sources
Cutshall, Caroline, Alan Linenburger, Devan Walsh, Matt Witczak, and Colorado State University. "Bootlegging, Immigrants, and Crime in Prohibition-Era Fort Collins." Intermountain Histories. Accessed October 24, 2018. http://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/132.