[nicmarlo]

I wonder if that had anything to do with the Underground Railroad? I know that runaway slaves came up from PA through Cortland County, north of Binghamton....there are many old homes in Homer and Cortland with secret rooms for the slaves to hide.....

[Labyrinthos]

The tunnels may have nothing to do with the underground railroad and everything to do with bootlegging during prohibition. Many of the cities along the Hudson River, including Troy, Albany, Hudson, and Poughkeepsie, have or had tunnels running down hill to the riverfront, where the bootleg was loaded on to barges destined for bigger cities.

BTW, so I don't have to read the last 1500 posts or so, what's with the fixation on tunnels?

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

As a kid, we were told that the undergound part of the railroad referred to secrecy, not tunnels, but who knows.

Always found the subject fascinating, as we had a secret room in our house from then, and I have one in my present home. Nice stone chamber behind the base of the chimney in the basement.

[Domestic Church]

Cortland was major RR town too...lots and lots of trains back in the 1800's.

I suspect many tunnels were built as a standard safeguard against many threats and for many uses including winter storage of produce or ice storage in summer for the larger families of that time.