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If you’re anything like me, you find tunnels irresistible. There’s something about hidden spaces -places I’m not really supposed to see- that flips a switch in my brain. Stumbling across Ball State University’s tunnels on a seventy-six-year-old Sanborn fire insurance map last night felt like rediscovering a secret! In a way, they hide in plain sight. 

There are people better suited to write about Ball State’s history than me, so I won’t get into it much. Today, the university sprawls across more than seven hundred acres, but everything began at the south end of campus in what’s now known as Old Quad. That cluster of early buildings formed the university’s original footprint, and it’s right there -beneath those historic halls- where the tunnels I spotted on a 1950 Sanborn Map lurked below the surface.

I’ve always heard the rumor that the Old Quad buildings were laced together by passageways built to carry steam heat from Ball State’s power plant- the building we now call the West Quad. The Sanborn Maps I found seem to back that up! From the power plant, tunnels branch out like weird spokes, running to Ball Gymnasium, Lucina Hall, Burris Laboratory School, and even farther to buildings like Elliott Hall and the Fine Arts Building. All of it is inconscpicous infrastructure, quietly doing its job beneath the campus.

Some of that infrastructure isn’t hidden at all, though: if you’ve ever sat on a bench like this at Ball State, you’ve actually been perched right on top of a tunnel vent. This one, just southwest of the Beneficence statue, marks a tunnel running east of Campus Drive near the Lucina Hall tennis courts. It’s a visible piece of Ball State’s underground network.

Unfortunately, the maps make it look like the tunnels barely missed the old Science Hall, now the Richard Burkhardt Building; the old Administration Building; and North Quad- once home to Ball State’s assembly hall and library. There’s no way they didn’t connect, though- right? One runs underneath University Boulevard towards Burris Laboratory School, but doesn’t seem to reach it on the map. Fortunately, I might be able to confirm that it does. 

It’s been nearly twenty years since some friends of mine may have slipped into that tunnel under University Avenue. I can’t remember how far my high school buddies went, how forboding it was, or how real the fear felt of accidentally backing into a pipe blasting steam at a thousand degrees. Maybe I just recall noticing an open entryway, studying it, then returning to find it locked up the next day. Whatever the case may have been, it makes for an interesting story.

Aside from the rest of the structures in the Old Quad, Sanborn Maps show that Ball Memorial Hospital once had its own system of tunnels that linked its original buildings together near the southwestern corner of the Old Quad. That makes perfect sense, really, since hospitals have always depended on hidden infrastructure to move heat, utilities, supplies, and staff out of sight.

As Ball State expanded, the stories got wilder. I’ve heard plenty of rumors about tunnels stretching far beyond Old Quad, supposedly linking places like Emens Auditorium, LaFollette Hall, and the Music Instruction Building. Some of those tales are backed up by hand-drawn maps passed around by students who slipped underground purely for the thrill of it. Other subterranean routes were shared in whispers. Still more were opened up by Ball State officials in a YouTube video! 

That said, here’s a map I’ve put together showing the tunnel network around Old Quad as it appears to have existed in 1950. It’s based on the Sanborn Maps I found, so it’s a historical snapshot, not a guarantee of what still survives today. Decades of new construction, demolition, and utility upgrades have almost certainly altered or erased parts of the system. 

Still, it’s a useful place to start if you’re trying to visualize how the early campus fit together below ground. As for access, though, university officials are adamant that the tunnels are strictly off-limits. In the end, that’s part of what makes Ball State’s tunnels so compelling!

Whether the oldest still exist, have been sealed off, or were quietly erased by progress doesn’t really matter. Instead, what lingers for me is the idea that Ball State has always been more than what’s visible at eye level; that beneath the paths students hurry along and the benches where they rest is a layered history of pipes, passageways, and forgotten solutions to very real problems. The tunnels are a reminder that campuses, like cities, grow in all directions at once, including straight down.

Stumbling across the tunnels in a Sanborn Map was about realizing, once again, how much of the past survives just below the surface, waiting for someone to notice. Hidden infrastructure, half-remembered rumors, foggy memories, and old maps all tell the same story: Ball State didn’t just rise- it was built, connected, and sustained in ways most of us never think about. That, to me, is where the real interest lies.

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