Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour
Guided walk through the buried 1880s storefronts and streets beneath a rebuilt downtown, starting in a restored 1890s saloon.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Bill Speidel's Underground Tour in Seattle starts with David Doc Maynard, the founder whose free-flowing credit and whiskey are credited with getting the settlement built in the eighteen fifties. It follows the saloon named for him, Doc Maynard's Public House, where the tour begins, then the Great Fire of June sixth, eighteen eighty-nine, sparked by an apprentice's glue pot, and the decision to raise the city's streets thirty feet above the old storefronts. Order a drink where the tour starts, then head underground into the buried streets those merchants once worked.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Central Saloon
Brick-front Gold Rush-era saloon that rose from the ashes of a citywide fire and helped launch the grunge scene.
Queen Anne
Steep hilltop neighborhood once hauled by an underground counterweight streetcar system, its tunnels still buried beneath the avenue.
Panama Hotel and Tea House
Five-story 1910 workingman's hotel with a preserved Japanese bathhouse and wartime storage room beneath a glass floor.
Chinatown-International District
Historic urban enclave of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Vietnamese heritage, shaped by displacement and resilience.
Cal Anderson Park
Urban park with a soccer field and walking paths built atop a buried underground water reservoir.
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park
Restored eighteen-nineties outfitting hotel now a gold rush museum with a ton of gold bars on display.