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The Old Portland Underground, better known locally as the Shanghai tunnels, are a group of passages in Portland, Oregon, United States, mainly underneath the Old Town/Chinatown section and connecting to the main business section. The tunnels connected the basements of many hotels and taverns to the waterfront of the Willamette River. They were built to move goods from the ships docked on the Willamette to the basement storage areas, allowing businesses to avoid streetcar and train traffic on the streets when delivering their goods.
During 1990, area businessman Bill Naito was quoted in the newspaper The Oregonian as saying that the tunnels are underneath "Northwest Couch, Davis and Everett streets".
Historians have stated that although the tunnels exist and the practice of Shanghaiing was sometimes practiced in Portland as elsewhere, there is not any evidence that the tunnels were used for this.
In popular culture
The underground tunnels are reportedly haunted and were featured on an episode of Ghost Adventures. These tunnels have also been featured as settings and plot devices in television shows set in Portland, such as Leverage and Grimm.