A while back, I shared a map of the tunnels under the oldest part of Ball State I created using a 1950s Sanborn fire insurance map. A few weeks later, I posted an updated map after a friend sent me an underground schematic from 1982. Several days ago, someone sent me the official map! I’m not going to post it here, but it appears as though mine was pretty accurate.
Ball State’s tunnels were originally laid down to contain steam lines that heated what’s known as the Old Quad from West Quad, the old heating plant and service building. The tunnels expanded as Ball State did, reaching most of the new buildings with new infrastructure like telephone, satellite, cable, and internet lines. Some are so stuffed with crap that they’re nearly impassable!
After I aligned that old map, I traced every tunnel twice or three times, then hunted for proof on Google Street View. Hatches, vents, grates, and brick benches all encouraged my accuracy. When it finally clicked into place, I leaned back and just stared at what I’d compiled: it wasn’t a handful of dusty service corridors- I’d found nearly 14,000 linear feet of passageways stretching silently beneath Ball State!
I’d missed some of the most recent extensions that tied the network into newer buildings on the west side of McKinley Avenue. Also, the map I was first sent was a little ambiguous about the tunnels underneath the old LaFollette residence complex. Still, most of the network -the history core, many of the expansions, and the connective tissue between the Old Quad- were correct. I was happy to be such a sleuth!
Tunnels are cool, but for all the jokes about conspiracy theories and secret passageways, the truth is both more mundane and more fascinating: this was infrastructure engineered to make modern campus life possible. For decades, the tunnels have existed just below our feet, unseen by most of the people who pass over them every day.
That’s what keeps pulling me back. Not secrecy for secrecy’s sake, but the idea that entire systems -nearly three miles of them- can hum along beneath our daily routines and footsteps.
