Chris Banyas
Staff Writer
Carefully traversing the darkened stairway and slowly descending into the earth itself, I briefly pause as my hand glides over a brick wall. I hurriedly jerk my head to the side, narrowly avoiding an outcropping of looming pipe. Soon, the entrance to the tunnels stands before me. The darkness stretches for what appears to be miles, lit only by periodic lights set into the side of the wall.
The Idaho State University tunnels have become a thing of legend. While their reality may be somewhat less than fantastic, it is no less intriguing.
“Forty buildings are connected to our steam line. The steam line from here travels all the way up to Building 65, which is Biology. It also goes over to the Albion Complex, which is attached to the Education Building,” said Mark Cates, heat plant foreman.
The original tunnels emanated from the basement of the Liberal Arts building, the original steam plant site. Constructed in 1947, the steam plant (the one with a giant smokestack protruding from its roof, for those not into the whole brevity thing) and the tunnels built at that time were patched into the already existing system.
The tunnels require extraordinary cautions, even for the employees who are trained to work within them.
“If there is any bare line, it would be basically 270 degrees. Nobody can outrun a steam leak. That steam would be travelling at about 55 miles per hour and would displace all the oxygen,” said Cates.
Aside from the more imminent workplace safety considerations, the tunnels are also said to be full of bugs and other large nasty critters.
In a 1986 article published in “The Bengal,” several students set out to adventure through and report back on the tunnels.
“Tunneling may get you kicked out of school, but it’s an ideal way to spend an evening being naughty,” Kevin Whorton said in the article.
Until three years ago, the steam plant was powered by coal. Prior to that, students sat through their mathematics courses, sipping hot coffee and gazing out the window through giant, unhurriedly descending flakes of snow, while filthy, soot covered employees at the steam plant schlepped coal for hours on end.
The plant still operates at all hours during the heating season but now relies on natural gas for fuel.
In the winter, if sidewalks are mysteriously not collecting snow, chances are there is a tunnel immediately underneath. The next time you step in from the cold and find your classroom warm and welcoming, take a quick moment to appreciate the titanic efforts of the staff of the steam plant and ISU’s entire maintenance staff.
