"crickets"

JFK slept at my house. I tucked him in myself, even though I was born about 12 days before he was killed in Dallas. It's true.

This is about trying to get money. Just like the Milton House was a way-point on the underground railroad. Totally unsubstantiated. Making up history again.......

I'm not as young as I was back then, but I remember taking the tour every summer. After all I lived about a 100 yards away.(1960-1974) And at that time the story was that the tunnel was to the house across the street. Not to the river.

Why would they document it if it is/was for the underground railroad? "Underground" meaning secret, hidden, not talked about, kept quiet..etc. Not specifically under the ground. So of course there would be no documentation. Duh....

All I remember is the rock candy sold in the souvenir shop.

I think a lot of those "tunnels" are just areas for aging beer. The Croak Brewery (later the Bower City Beverage Co.) was located at Franklin st. and Mineral Point ave. I worked at the Tallman House in the early 80's doing painting and stuff. Being in high school and knowing of a possible tunnel, I scoured the entire building (including the carriage house) and never came across anything. If it is in fact there, it is very well hidden.

To TheAnswerals42

All I said was that it has never been documented .... (like the Milton House or countless other sites)I would say it's possible, but not likely...

Myself, I would be very surprised if a tunnel was discovered that lead to the river. I believe the Tallman property encompassed the entire area with various out-buildings used for storage, tool shop, gardening equipment, etc. I find it more feasible to think there was a tunnel that lead to one of the out-buildings for the convenience of the hired hands.

Does this mean GM is not coming back to Janesville?

rgm- you can see strange foundations down there now still. I wonder what those are about. It is in that area. If you go in behind that white building with green trim- used to be Alzheimers center.

Milton House has a tunnel. I thought I was told it went to the Tallman house.
They say that colored glass window on second floor had a lamp that was lit if it was "safe" for them to come up from River.

I also remember being shown the door in the closet when I toured the Tallman House in the 60's. The tour guide speculated that it might have been used for the Underground railroad.

Inside one of the water closets is a hidden door. The guide opened it and showed us the steps. This water closet is on an upper floor and to the right as you enter the room. The guide showed us this back in 1968. This one, as I remember went on the roof.

I think it connects to the basement. Somebody should contact Joe Knilans!

Where's Geraldo?

Maybe it's Bigfoot.

There is a tunnel and it is currently used as The Path To Prosperity and holds a vintage wine collection.

WisFamily- Most people that commit a crime don't leave around a lot of evidence; especially evidence that can be verified over 100 years later. We know parts of the UGRR went through Janesville. Its very possible that the Tallman House was a stop.

I BLAME OBAMA

How about that "tunnel" that was rumored to go from Craig Sr High to a house across Randall (which was supposedly the janitors house)?

I know theres some old tunnels under many of the old commercial buildings in the Atwood area of Madison. One restaurant I did service at had a set of stairs going below the basement that was boarded off that the owner said you could go to the capital building completely underground back in the day but most likely now is mainly blocked off.

There is no verified existence of the Tallman family participating in the underground railroad in Wis. He did support John Brown and he did send money to Kansas to support the "Free Kansas" movement of the 1850s. He had a stronger dislike of slavery than Lincoln at that time, and would have donated to any anti-slavery cause. The story was drawn up to bolster tourism I think....the brewery in that area is probably a reason for the tunnels. I love the site and wish more would visit it, and I think the story is interesting. Mr. Tallman was a staunch abolitionist and should be remembered as that and a good citizen of early Janesville.

I know for a fact there is no tunnel and never was.

Just so you know Janesville was a differant place downtown then it is today --- around 1900 they changed the street levels and the addresses- an example if you are every in the Main Street Saloon . ask them nicly to show you the basement --- the old door way to the street is there 7-8 feet below ground level and to the west the old door and windows are buried under ground --- to protect from the river --- so yes a tunnel is possible

bibiana
I am glad to hear you talk about the tunnel.
I remember visiting the Tallman house in the early 70's when the guide told us about the tunnel to the river to protect the slaves running to freedom.

Hi, For many years, I was the Treasurer for the Tallman House in its early years as a historical society. There is a secret tunnel that was used to bring slaves into the Tallman House from the Rock River as they made their way North to freedom. I personally saw the tunnel. The Tallmans supported President Lincoln - who also slept at the Tallman House.

The Underground Railroad helped slaves to find freedom in the North. You can read more about it at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground...

John Blint

I love stories like this. When I was a kid my Dad started digging up our basement looking for a secret tunnel to the neighbors house a couple of doors down. My hand and foot prints are still visible. The rumor was that Al Capone owned our house and the tunnel was used for bootlegging. Never did verify that, but a couple of years ago someone who is familiar with the neighbors house said there was a bunker buried in their yard. I'm sure there are quite a few stories like that around this area.

I remember the area. It was cleaned-up when the bike trail was constructed. There was an iron door in a small stone wall located in the river. It was visible from time to time depending on the water level. It was just south of the a sandstone bluff that had the rope swing. If had to guess, the iron door was directly east of the intersection of Mineral Point and River/Franklin - positioned slightly north of the Tallman House. Even if that door was still there, that part of the neighborhood, including streets, utilities, houses and foundations, was demolished in the 70s.

back in the mid-nineties I worked for the City Park patrol and we would walk an area near Traxler park that had once been rooms built into a hill to store wine or some sort of alcohol. There was all sorts of broken bottles on there.

Who cares if there was a tunnel or not...

Great previous comments! Speculation comes and goes, but enough time has gone by to probably to end this discussion.

Back in the 1970's me and my friends would go cat fishing on the river down there. There was some old brick lined "rooms" with vaulted ceilings, mostly caving in, that seemed pretty scarry back then. We would find old bottle fragments and some old iron pieces. Seems like that would be the right area. No tunnel but it was pretty cool.... probably was a little dangerous but we came out of it alright. Great fun as a kid

Or they could just be abandoned coal shoots, or cisterns that older homes used to collect rainwater for re-use.

What we would call a "green" technology today.

Hmmm, enough good accounts of its existance and an anomaly... time to get the permits and a back-hoe! (Once the anomaly has been analyzed, of course.) It could have been for reasons of security or for expediting materials, or similar in use as the Milton House tunnel had been for. I wouldn't have a clue, but maybe unearthing this historical tunnel may help find something telling.

There was a trap door in the closet at Park Place theater down town you could drop down in and a big opening went all the way under the road and you could see where a tunnel that once went into the Monterey hotel was bricked up. Rumor was there used to be a lot of tunnels under ground linking buildings and went to a bomb shelter in the court house... not sure how credible that is though.

The Steelworkers Hall (Carpenter House) on Shore Dr in Beloit has a similar "hidden" room with an opening at the end which was supposed to lead to a tunnel to the river.