Pogue’s Run
“Pogue’s Run is real,” read an online comment I scrolled across in 2017. “There’s a river that runs under Indianapolis for two-and-a-half miles, and you can walk the stream from one end to the other.”
For someone like me, who is fascinated with the world beneath our feet - particularly when each step is illegal, this was the ultimate revelation.
I initially became curious about urban tunnels after discovering some in the basement of my college dorm. On a small campus I thought I knew so well, I was sleeping steps away from a hidden underworld. I spent most evenings my freshman year searching for more.
I mapped maybe a mile of tunnels criss-crossing my small University in St. Charles, Missouri. I could traverse between several buildings, only to exit out of an obscure maintenance closet or crawl space, becoming the bonafide expert of the rumored underworld.
Some of the most hidden tunnels looked like they hadn’t been touched for decades. Others had been repurposed for maintenance access, and a few seemed to provide no purpose at all. After prying open a manhole cover near one of the older buildings, my flashlight illuminated a cavernous concrete room 15 feet below. Only seeing a portion of the chamber, I quickly fetched a rope from another tunnel and volunteered to lower myself down.
I knew I was stuck before my feet hit the ground. The room was a concrete tomb, a vast cage with no way out. If it was meant to hold something, its purpose was a mystery—no pipes, no doors, nothing to explain its existence. When I shut off my flashlight, the darkness was total.
It’s a problem really, to believe every hole in the ground serves as a gateway to a parallel world. Most manholes, grates, and latches are a portal to nowhere. Still I can’t help but navigate every step with an air of skepticism. Years later, I would accidentally get myself stuck inside an art installation. It’s always the same delayed regret because the panic creeps in slow. But for the moment, the feeling was unfamiliar. I felt dwarfed by the concrete room’s size yet almost immediately claustrophobic.
Katie turning back after finding the river. My tunnel search often ends up in a storm drain or sewer.
The rescue was a team effort. The ground crew enlisted other students across campus, recruiting them solely on the basis of “they look like they would be good at tug-of-war.” It worked. They pulled me out to small applause, as members of the wrestling team high-fived each other. I felt like one of the Chilean miners.
Since then, I've taken a more cautious approach toward searching for tunnels, treating them like I treat waterfalls - always curious, never chasing.
And Pogue’s Run doesn't have to be chased. Its massive nature makes it impossible to hide. Just south of where the Kentucky Avenue Bridge crosses the White River, within earshot of I-70, the culvert remains today.
Standing at the west entrance
All tunnels are mysterious, but Pogue’s Run has an especially curious history. Its tale begins with the city itself, and one of its original occupents.
George Pogue and his family were one of the first new settlers to the recently formed state of Indiana when they built a house along the river. One morning, after some of his horses vanished, Pogue pursued a suspect into the woods. That was the last time he was seen. Just two years after his pioneering settlement, George Pogue became the state of Indiana’s first cold case.
Pogue’s Run in the southeast corner was the sole disruption in Ralaston’s plan
The following year, the General Assembly of Indiana chose a site for the capital of their new state. They hired Alexander Ralston, apprentice of Washington D.C.’s famed planner Pierre L’Enfant, to design the layout for Indianapolis. Ralston’s elegant plan mirrored D.C.’s: a square grid one mile on each side, with a circular plaza at the center and four wide boulevards radiating out toward the square’s corners.
However, in the southeast corner, the grid was disrupted. Ralaston would learn that locals referred to this river as Pogue’s run, which meandered menacingly across his perfectly symmetrical grid.
In the latter half of the 19th century, Indianapolis expanded beyond the original square mile, and Pogue’s Run caused even more trouble. Industrialization led factories to pollute the water. During rainy seasons it would overflow, flooding streets and damaging property. As sewers dumped their contents into the stream, it became unsanitary and a breeding ground for mosquitoes that spread disease.
City planners and railroad companies, eager to elevate their tracks, decided to confine the stream. By 1905, they devised a plan, and by 1916 they trapped it underground.
The work was considered a marvel of engineering, and concluded with one of the most unusual grand openings. In front of the press, the mayor of Indianapolis attempted to cross through the tunnel in his car to display how large and successful the project had been. A few minutes later, he backed out of the tunnel after becoming nauseated by the smell.
Just check out that early 20th century headline...
Like its namesake, the river also disappeared, and after a few decades, few remembered there was ever a river running through downtown. I scoured the internet for stories of the tunnels, expecting fugitives, ghost stories, and urban legends. The only real mention of the tunnel remains on internet forums, which I studied until I could make my own trip.
While it’s less than two hours away, I don’t make a habit of going to Indianapolis. People in Louisville jokingly refer to Indiana, which is officially known as the Crossroads State, as something just to pass through. Like the tunnel’s grand opening, you can cross through if you want, but it might make you nauseous. Even my favorite Indiana city, Gary (which is an urban explorer's dream), is bemoaned by Indiana residents. They really do have it all backwards.
Nevertheless, Katie and I planned the trip alongside our beloved Louisville Cardinals basketball team, who were playing Michigan for a chance to go to the Sweet 16. Standing outside Lucas Oil Stadium, I stepped away for 15 minutes to scalp some tickets. At that moment, Katie ran into Hall of Fame Coach and Louisville legend Denny Crum. I missed the whole thing.
The picture I was handed upon my return...
The game ended in defeat, and we made a quick exit. In 30 minutes, we would be standing underneath the court.
Of course, we had no idea of knowing when we were under the court. Walking into the tunnel is disorienting. At its entrance, you feel small. Three culverts big enough to drive a car through quickly merge to a single stream. Water, which fluctuates between a trickle and a current, flowed gently at our feet that day. Drops echoed when condensation fell off rebar, which hung from the ceiling like stalactites.
Five hundred feet in, and the entrance is a speck; any further and the genesis-type darkness envelops you. I squinted my eyes to adjust, but there was nothing to adjust to. I kept the light off, walking further into the abyss with my hand brushing the tunnel’s side. I was invisible.
When my light turned back on it flashed against graffiti etched on the wall. Some people who graffiti underground say it’s an impulse as old as cave drawings. I looked at the drawing and imagined a buffalo. Then I pictured a hand print. Despite my efforts, I drew no symbolic or religious conclusions from the etching. It was a simple, careless penis.
Of course, not all the graffiti was juvenile. Some of it was beautiful. There’s something admirable about anyone who creates art in a place they know it will never be seen, and Pogue’s run is a miles wide canvas.
Seeing daylight from the east entrance
The tunnel was a century old old when I stepped inside. Potholes had formed in parts of the floor, and side tunnels made of collapsing brick meandered off the main route. It was mostly silent, except when screeches from above crept through an off-shoot and echoed through the tunnel - emulating a cry for help or a car horn, depending on your state of mind.
I lamented not bringing a bike or skateboard, and mentioned how fun it would be to ride an electric scooter from end to end. Then, halfway through, we saw a hand painted sign reading “50 foot drop ahead”. My instincts told me it was a cruel joke, but we switched over to the parallel culvert at the next opportunity just in case - before eventually doubling back.
An opening near one of the entrances connects parallel culverts. Photo credit: Bookmark Indy
It was hard to comprehend the ground we covered along Pogue’s Run, but that evening I pinpointed our route using archived maps online. This is when it became clear, a walk through Pogue’s Run takes you below some of Indianapolis’s most iconic buildings.
When the city of Indianapolis buried the river, they found themselves with non-purposed land for the first time in 100 years. They made the most of it, undertaking a dozen iconic projects that still stand above the tunnel today.
A walk through Pogue’s run takes you dead center of Lucas Oil Stadium, Union Station, Banker’s Life Fieldhouse (home of the Indiana Pacers), and several historic buildings.
I made note to remember where to stand if the Super Bowl returns to Indianapolis. About .54 miles after entering the tunnels west entrance, we were standing under the 50 yard line. March Madness had continued directly above us. Below the bedrock, everything stood still.
About .54 miles after entering the tunnel, your standing under the 50 yard line of the Indianapolis Colts
Indianapolis isn’t really known as a river town. The nearby White River, which Pogue’s Run eventually flows into, was an afterthought to a city planner focused on symmetry. Still, it’s confounding to me that Pogue’s Run, in its proximity and scale, has not become a piece of history people want to embrace.
We had only hopped one fence and scrambled down a ravine to make our way to the tunnel’s entrance that day. Just minutes from the city center, where 15,000 people were watching the University of Kentucky and Wichita State face off in Mach Madness, we were nearly alone.
Of course, there are others who experience the tunnel every day. We quickly encountered another group, maybe a dozen people, who had made their own makeshift community near the river’s edge. They were unhoused, steps away from the tunnel’s entrance. They spoke for a while about what it was like to live down there. One man named Chuck mentioned he might try to get housing in Louisville one day, and we traded numbers just in case.
The nearby tunnel was not a shelter for Chuck. When weather was bad, the tunnel was ferocious. Pogue’s Run was merely a neighbor to them, another thing forced underground for convenience - another thing hidden in plain sight. To be forced underground is to be rendered invisible, unimportant at best and mistrusted at worst.
Of course, the things below us are not unimportant. Burying rivers for convenience is rarely without consequence, and more often than not, water wins with vengeance. Across the country, dozens of miles of rivers have been buried in urban areas including New York, Detroit, Boston, and St Louis.
In every case mentioned, the endeavor has caused enormous problems for the city, leading to drainage issues, flooding, erosion, and constant headaches for the people who live nearby. Exhuming buried waterways, an enormously difficult and expensive process known as “daylighting”, has gained traction across every town mentioned, but there are no plans to do so in Indianapolis.
If the tunnel’s prominence is subdued, it’s a testament to its success, an anomaly amongst similar undertakings. And as long as that’s the case, Pogue’s Run can continue to exist in relative anonymity, permitting most people to live their scheduled lives undisturbed. A few though, get to experience something far better: the revelation that there’s a world beneath our feet rendered invisible, yet teeming with mystery and primed for exploration.
Locations mentioned:
Pogue Run East Entrance | 39.77121, -86.14037
Pogue Run West Entrance | 39.75618, -86.17228
Katie standing near the entrance
