Secret Tunnels and D.U.M.B.s – The Weird and the Wild West

Many of the mysteries of the American West are related to its great natural beauty and scenic grandeur. There are mysteries in the mountains, in the volcanoes, in the endless deserts and in the spectacular tablelands.

If all else fails, the mysteries come down from above—from the immense expanse of clear, starry skies, whence come the “Visitors” who like to baffle us with their aerial acrobatics, or, as part of their inscrutable agenda, abduct and mutilate cattle and horses and even people from time to time.

But that’s hardly the whole story. Because one of the strangest mysteries of the Wild West has nothing at all to do with grandiose desert vistas and rugged mountain ranges—and for the very good reason that it is entirely hidden away beneath the earth.

I’m speaking, of course, about the vast network of secret tunnels and “deep underground military bases” (helpfully known by the humorous acronym of D.U.M.B.s) which are rumored to exist beneath much of the American Southwest. If real, they are a knotty mystery of the most Gordian and irresolvable kind; depending on whom you ask, they can be attributed to the US government, an even more powerful shadow government run by a cabal of unaccountable global elitists, an extraterrestrial race like the Greys or Reptilians, or perhaps some combination of all of the above.

Naturally, the conspiracy debunkers pooh-pooh the idea altogether; and I suppose they have a point. After all, the evidence is tenuous, at best. Still, the notion of an immense system of interconnected, city-like secret bases lurking beneath the western states is a fascinating one, and I guess it appeals to us because the motif of a whole world of unknown civilizations or beings in the underworld has been a part of our folkloric and mythical heritage for a very long time indeed.

I could discuss at length the ancient origins of this idea—the concepts of a material or spiritual underworld common to most peoples around the world, including the Hopi and Zuni of the Southwest, who trace their beginnings to an underground realm whence they emerged into the light of the upper world. The Little People of the British Isles are often represented as the inhabitants of a supernatural sort of underworld; then there are such stories from the Middle Ages as the “Green Children of Woolpit,” who claimed to hail from a subterranean world called “St. Martin’s Land.”

More recently, writers of weird and fantasy fiction have made endless use of the underworld theme: Adam Seaborn’s Symzonia comes to mind, along with the likes of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race, short stories like “Worms of the Earth” by Robert E. Howard or “The Red Hand” by Arthur Machen, and even Sydney Fowler Wright’s The World Below—albeit this last in a futuristic setting. Edgar Allan Poe, we are told, alluded to it at the end of his only novel-length story, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym; and even the famed weird story writer H. P. Lovecraft explored the theme in a ghostwritten story about a mysterious civilization beneath the plains of Kansas.

So it makes sense that we’re intensely interested in whatever might be lurking below our feet. But is there any proof that the Southwest is riddled with subterranean tunnels and D.U.M.B.s?

Well, one of these “proofs” came in the form of a rather dubious map that made the rounds on the Internet some years ago. Now I have no idea who produced this map, but if it is a forgery, I feel compelled to salute its imagination.

In short, the map shows an intricate network of underground “tube-shuttle tunnels” connecting a series of “subterranean bases,” many of which are near known aboveground cities and towns. A flying saucer symbol is also located near some of the bases, presumably indicating that it is either wholly extraterrestrial, or is jointly operated by aliens and humans. These include the usual suspects, such as Area 51 and Mt. Shasta, as well as a few head-scratchers—like Riverton, Wyoming, and Lubbock, Texas.

According to the map, Colorado has more than its fair share of D.U.M.B.s, including underneath Denver (no surprise there), Colorado Springs, and what looks to be Blanca Peak in the SLV, which as I’ve mentioned before is somewhat notorious in ufological circles for harboring a secret extraterrestrial base. Much more surprising were the bases supposedly beneath Creede and Delta; although, since Creede sits in the middle of a giant, ancient volcanic caldera that puts Yellowstone to shame, I suppose it’s at least plausible that the whole area is full of volcanic tubes, vents, and caverns…and, presumably, a giant saucer base.

New Mexico is absolutely riddled with underground bases and tunnels, which should surprise no one…least of all me. Los Alamos, Taos, Dulce, Albuquerque—they’ve all got one; though I was surprised by some of the less obvious choices, which apparently include fairly nondescript places like Datil, Tres Piedras, Raton, and the Four Corners Monument.

Still, the map matches fairly well with a list of D.U.M.B.s in the United States that mentions, among other things, that Alamosa has a “reported saucer base,” that Ft. Collins is a “base for Gray aliens” (can confirm), that Dulce is “run directly by Illuminati w/Army and Airforce help”—along with some extra security provided by Wackenhut, that the Carlsbad Caverns contain the ruins of an old saucer base, and that there are “humans kept in glass cylinders” in the deepest levels beneath Los Alamos.

I find nothing at all surprising about that last assertion.

Now, given the lack of sources and provenance for these maps and lists of D.U.M.B.s and tunnels, it makes it easy to reject the entire notion out of hand.

But there are plenty of other stories of mysterious passages worming their way beneath the American Southwest, even if they’re not as fancy as rumors of a subterranean transportation network connecting deep underground military bases.

For instance, native Taoseños and Santa Féans insist that the bedrock beneath their towns are honeycombed with passages and tunnels built by…well, some say the Puebloan Indians, others say the Spanish settlers. The reasons for these passages vary depending on whom you talk to: for storing food and people during Comanche raids, or to facilitate the romantic assignations of prominent politicians and businessmen with local prostitutes in the red light districts.

Legends also speak of a natural network of volcanic tunnels radiating from Black Mesa, on the San Ildefonso Pueblo, which is very close to Los Alamos; some of these tunnels, it is said, were used to escape from or launch attacks on the Spanish during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. There are even rumors that some of these passages lead all the way from Black Mesa to the Santa Fe Plaza—a distance of over twenty miles.

Yet more stories of mysterious tunnels come from the region of the Spanish Peaks, another volcanic area riddled with vents, caverns, and ancient lava dykes.

In Colorado Legends & Lore, Stephanie Waters explains that a volcanic rock feature in the area known as La Muñeca—“The Doll”—was haunted by

“…the evil snake people who lived in the dark way of the viper. The few who reported seeing these supernatural beings described them as shadowy, elongated figures shaped in human form carrying sharp knives, spears and tomahawks. These elusive creatures dwelled in underground clusters that were connected throughout the Southwest by subterranean tunnels. Each clan took care of one colossal viper. To ensure fertility of their people, every spring, the firstborn male in a clan would be sacrificed to their serpent king. These viper gods were living totems that thrived on a diet of involuntary sacrifices—mostly defenseless children and the elderly. After dark, snake people would travel through the underground maze, creep into Indian camps and steal victims to feed to their hungry god-kings.”

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It’s an intriguing story—unfortunately, there’s even less attribution for this tale than there is for the map of mysterious tunnels and D.U.M.B.s. But, at the very least, all these stories suggest that the notion of secret underground tunnels in this part of the American West has quite a lengthy pedigree.

Verdict: It’s easy to dismiss all of this as nonsense…but sometimes I’m not so sure.

You come across half-forgotten things like the “nuclear subterrene” developed by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory back in the ’70s; this nuclear-powered earth-borer looks like something straight out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, and was designed to use heat from the reactor to melt a tunnel through the earth’s crust.

Of course we’re told the plans were scrapped and the concept was abandoned; but I’m not sure I buy it. I’m even told they tested a non-nuclear prototype in the cliffs and mesas of volcanic tuff near Los Alamos, and that’s something I can believe. The place is lousy with secret facilities and installations, and hardly a week goes by that you don’t hear the thunderous boom of a massive explosion emanating from the general direction of Los Alamos—easily audible even from Santa Fe.

And that can mean only one thing: they’re probably blasting new tunnels and caverns beneath the Pajarito Plateau for an expansion of the Los Alamos D.U.M.B.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they only said they’d scrapped the nuclear subterrene, and instead built themselves a fleet of the things; by now, fifty years on, Los Alamos could very well sit like an enormous spider at the very center of a vast web of underground bases and tunnels, just like that curious map shows.

It might even explain some other mysteries as well—such as the notorious “Taos Hum,” which could very well be the subsonic noise of earth-boring machinery or underground facilities leaking through the porous, volcanic bedrock of that part of New Mexico.

With all the secret bases in the American West—the Denver Airport, Dulce Base, Area 51, Blanca Peak, and even the less secret ones like Los Alamos and Cheyenne Mountain—I guess it makes sense that you’d want to connect them all with a network of tunnels.

So for the time being, I suppose the verdict has to stand as “not proven.” Maybe the American West really is full of deep underground bases, which the government uses to house aliens, or as laboratories for secret, paranormal research, or as facilities for collecting adrenochrome or whatever from abducted children. Or maybe they’re just a refuge for the “elites” to bug out to when things go south.

Either way, it brings new meaning to that old slogan “Know What’s Below…”