Hobby tunneling


Hobby tunneling is tunnel construction as a diversion. Usually, hobby tunnelers dig their tunnels by hand, using little equipment, and some can spend years or even decades to achieve any degree of completion. In some cases tunnels have been dug secretly, and only discovered by chance.

Motivations

A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through the surrounding soil or rock for the purpose of transport, passage or communication. Tunnel construction is a sub-discipline of civil engineering and usually the domain of engineers and construction companies. When civilians dig tunnels it may be for criminal purposes, like smuggling or hiding illegal goods, or gaining unauthorised access to an area. People may also build escape tunnels, such as those under the Berlin Wall.
Tunneling may be part of the building of underground dwellings. Subterranean construction may be done as an art form, as in the work of Ra Paulette. Dutch graphic designer Leanne Wijnsma digs short, shallow tunnels as an art form and for fun. She had dug thirteen by 2015, three at cultural festivals.

Hobby

A few people have dug tunnels as a hobby or for fun, although some have given additional reasons for their activities. Seymour Cray, for instance, has said that the work of digging helped him to think about other problems, and Harrison Dyar saw digging as a form of exercise.
Some hobbyists started out constructing something understandably useful, but continued digging after completion. This was the case with William Lyttle, who started by digging a wine cellar, and Michael Altmann, who excavated a cooling cellar for a cafe. A Swiss contemporary of Altmann named Peter Junker dug in his garden, searching for water, but continued digging after finding some, excavating a tunnel length of.
Others have always said that they excavated for a particular purpose, although the tunnelling effort seems out of proportion to the stated purpose. Dyar biographer Marc Epstein thinks it is mainly outsiders that desire a sense of purpose. On Dyar's tunneling for exercise reasons he says that "it’s almost unfathomable, the amount of energy it would take" and that "it still doesn’t add up". Author Will Hunt thinks extensive tunnelling is at least part obsession. Psychiatrist Anton Tölk believes that tunnel digging can be interpreted as a desire to return to the security of the mother's womb, and that as an activity it allows contemplative satisfaction.

Notable cases

Harrison Dyar

The American entomologist Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. constructed a network of tunnels on two occasions, with a length of combined. His first, under his Washington, D.C. home was accidentally discovered during construction work in 1917, without drawing much attention. It was rediscovered in 1924, when a truck sank though the pavement nearby. The tunnel system led to speculation in the press, not in the least because a lot of German newspapers from the war years of 1917 and 1918 were found in the tunnels. After a few days Dyar came forward as the tunnels' constructor, claiming he had dug them between 1906 and 1916, when he relocated to California.
Back in Washington a few years later, Dyar dug out a second set of tunnels under his new home. The network had concrete lined walls, steel staircases and electric lighting. Dyar described hobby tunneling as a kind of exercise for him, saying "some men play golf, I dig tunnels".
An explanation for the presence of German papers in his first tunnels has never been found.

William Lyttle

In the mid sixties, British civil engineer William Lyttle dug a wine cellar under his Hackney property. Having done so, he said that he had "found a taste for the thing" and kept on digging, for some forty years. Eventually, several tunnels on multiple levels led in all directions, under the property and surrounding grounds, some of them long. After complaints by neighbours, a power supply interruption and a sinkhole in the pavement, the borough had a survey carried out that revealed the extent of the tunneling. Lyttle was evicted and the tunnels were filled with concrete.

Lyova Arakelyan

n man Lyova Arakelyan dug a storage cellar under his rural house in 1985. When completed, he continued to dig and kept at it for some 23 years, constructing an extensive complex of tunnels, rooms and stairs which extended deep into solid rock. Arakelyan stated that he received directions for his work in dreams and visions. The underground spaces were transformed into a museum, called 'Divine Underground', after his death in 2008. Arakelyan never made any money from his tunneling in life, and the museum provides some income for his family.

William Schmidt

William "Burro" Schmidt was a Californian miner who spent 32 years drilling a tunnel through solid granite. He claimed to be building a shortcut from his mining operation to the smelter. When a new road was constructed, rendering his shortcut obsolete, Schmidt carried on his work regardless. He used simple handtools and occasionally explosives for tunneling, carrying out the debris in a wheelbarrow or on the backs of his two burros. Schmidt supported himself by working as a farm hand in summer. If precious metals were ever found, Schmidt never took any of it to market. Schmidt the tunneler took the better part of Schmidt the miner, according to a later caretaker of the Burro Schmidt Tunnel. When his tunnel was completed, he sold his concession to another miner, packed his belongings and left.

Seymour Cray

The American engineer and supercomputer architect Seymour Cray is known to have been a hobby tunneller. Cray built an cedar-floored tunnel under his house, saying that the digging helped him to think about in computer designs, saying that "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem."

Michael Altman

Between 1958 and 2008 Austrian Michael Altman dug two tunnels of combined. At first, he wanted a cooling cellar for a cafe he was to open, but upon completion he could not get a permit. With his wife he opened another place somewhere else, and kept tunneling as a hobby. Altman would mainly use a pickaxe for digging and occasionally explosives, after passing an explosives handling examination at the fire department. He dug a second tunnel branching off from the first one, using a tunnel boring machine he designed and built himself. In 2008 he hit a block of granite and, considering his age, gave up tunnel digging.

Baldassare Forestiere

In 1904 Sicilian immigrant Baldassare Forestiere bought a plot of land in Fresno for horticulture. The hardpan soil however, was unsuited for the fruit trees he intended to plant. While working elsewhere Forestiere dug a maze of underground and below gound spaces to escape the summer heat of the San Joaquin Valley. He opened up ceilings to let in light and below he planted the fruit trees he wanted in the first place. The complex consists of bedrooms, living spaces, patios, a fish pond and hallways. After his death in 1946 some of the land was sold off and somme tunnels filled in, but currently about have been saved. It is known as the Forestiere Underground Gardens and has a listing in the National Register of Historic Places.

Glen Havens

inhabitant Glen Havens constructed a maze of tunnels and caverns under his house. Havens started out in 1949, enlarging his barbecue pit, but ended up digging roughly of tunnels and underground rooms. Havens enlisted the help of his son and other children in the neighbourhood, who earned pocket money in the process. The underground complex was large enough to hold his daughter's wedding reception in 1960, with some 200 guests attending. Havens ignored building regulations and never got any permit. Local authorities recommended people not to go inside, but took no further action.

Others

n miner Manuel Barrantes has built an underground family house, consisting of hallways, bedrooms, conference rooms and a bathroom. The complex, totalling, is used as a home and a museum. In Butler, Pennsylvania Ron Heist created a 50 room dwelling made of salvaged materials from abandoned places in the vicinity. It includes several tunnels Heist dug out and reinforced himself. A documentary film was made about him, entitled Mole Man.
In 2015 a tunnel was discovered in a Toronto park. After a few days of speculations in media, the use as a terrorist hideout being among them, young construction worker Elton McDonald came forward as its builder. Asked for the purpose of his digging, he answered "Honestly, I loved it so much. I don't know why I loved it". In 1984 Russian Leonid Murlyanchik had the plan of digging a tunnel towards the house of his beloved Ekaterina. However, after Ekaterina's son objected to the liaison, he changed his intention into building his city of Lebedyan a subway system. For 27 years Murlyanchik spent most of his hours, and his pension money, on the project. At his death in 2011 he had completed of tunnel, which was subsequently closed off.

John Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland

The 5th Duke of Portland is known to have been a hobby tunneler, although he did no digging himself but rather had workmen build his tunnels. An extensive network of underground spaces was constructed at his Welbeck Abbey estate in the 19th century, with a total length of around. It included hallways, a ballroom, a billiards room, a library and a tunnel from the mansion to the riding house, wide enough for several people to walk in side by side. Some of the spaces were lit by lightwells and at night by gas lighting. Most of the spaces that are known as 'underground' are actually 'below ground', constructed in a cut-and-cover technique.
Few of the tunnels and rooms were ever used for their intended purpose, however. Towards the end of his life, the Duke lived as a recluse and very few people actually got to see him. Spaces that were intended for social gatherings, like the ballroom, were never used. But the Duke did frequently use the tunnels that allowed him to move about his property mostly unseen.

Press coverage

Several urban legends or even hoaxes involving private tunnels have appeared in media. One such a story is about an Irishman who dug a tunnel from his bedroom to his local pub, whithout his wife noticing. In one version of the story, that did the rounds at least between 2014 and 2018, the tunneler is said to have used a spoon for digging.
When a tunnel in Calgary was discovered in 2016, a local newspaper ran a do it yourself tunneling manual as a story.
The 1997 novel The Underground Man is loosely based on the life and tunneling of the 5th Duke of Portland.