ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Chicago Tunnel Company

So imagine you have a big toy tunnel that you can crawl through. Now imagine that some grown-up people decided to build a really, REALLY big tunnel under the ground in a big city called Chicago.

This company would dig through the dirt and rocks so they could create a big underground tunnel that would go all around the city. It would be so big that big trucks could drive through it, and the company could use it to transport things like coal and other materials to different places around Chicago.

The Chicago Tunnel Company was a real company that did this a long time ago. They started digging in 1899 and kept going until they had about 60 miles of tunnels under the city!

It was pretty amazing, but also kind of complicated. The tunnels got smaller the deeper they went, and the workers had to be really careful not to cause any problems above ground while they were digging underneath it.

Eventually, the Chicago Tunnel Company stopped using the tunnels for transportation and they were mostly forgotten about. But some people still remember them today as a fascinating engineering feat from a long time ago.