ELLINWOOD — Ghosts mixed with visitors in the lobby of Ellinwood’s historic Wolf Hotel Friday evening. The social mixer was a prelude to Ellinwood Underground Foundation’s first-ever fundraiser to benefit the preservation of the community’s Main Street Tunnels. The evening focused on six of the underground’s prominent historic stories, while visitors encountered six flavors of the 1920s cowboy classics and speakeasy saloon specials for a night of dining and living history.
Underground History
Founded in 1871, Ellinwood quickly became a bustling town in Barton County. Its position as a stop along the Santa Fe Trail and, later, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway, made it a key location for trade and commerce. With this prosperity came a need for infrastructure and expansion, and the town’s leaders sought innovative ways to accommodate the growing population and the businesses that were flourishing in the late 19th century.
Beneath Ellinwood’s thriving downtown, merchants and town planners began constructing a series of underground tunnels.
These tunnels, which date back to the late 1800s, were designed primarily as practical solutions to the extreme Kansas weather.
The town’s elite, including prominent business owners, used the tunnels as pathways connecting various shops, saloons, and hotels without the need to brave the summer heat, winter snowstorms, or spring rainstorms that often turned the town’s unpaved roads into impassable slush.
Among the most notable locations connected by the tunnels were the Dick Building, the Ellinwood Livery, and the Wolf Hotel. The subterranean network featured a range of amenities, including a barber shop, bathhouse, and saloons. Beyond practical purposes, the tunnels were also reputed to have served more discreet functions—hosting gambling dens, speakeasies during Prohibition, and possibly serving as sites for illicit activities. Rumors of crime and mystery, though never fully substantiated, have lingered in local lore, adding a sense of intrigue.
Most of the tunnel system remained open and in use through the 1930s, but during World War II, separation walls were built to block access from one building to another.
Then in the summer of 1982, with the building of new sidewalks on Main street, most of the remaining tunnels were filled with sand, retained, but blocked. Now, only the tunnels under the Dick Building and the Wolf Hotel remain accessible.
The Tunnels were primarily a local curiosity, however, until Adrianna Dierolf, a member of the Dick family, began showing them to the public in 1981. “My family built the Dick Building and I fought tooth and nail to have the Underground Tunnels be acknowledged by the Kansas Historical Society,” noted Dierolf, who attended Friday’s Revelry. “Not everybody wanted us, but I fought against those opinions and we got it done. Both the tunnels underneath the Dick Building and the Wolf Hotel. We are trying, all of the time, to expand, because what we have is so important, not just for Barton County, but for the state of Kansas. We need to have that understood.”
The evening begins
As the evening progressed to tunnel time, Foundation President Rick Casagrande welcomed the first tour visitors on behalf of the newly-created organization. Casagrande then introduced the first ghostly character, portrayed by current Wolf Hotel owner Chris McCord, as Leo Bockemoble, bank manager and cashier of the Ellinwood Bank in 1908, which was closed in January of that year to investigate illicit banking practices. While the ghostly Bockemoble assured the crowd that the funds they had in the bank were safe, he also noted that more to the story would be revealed as they proceeded by small groups into the tunnels.
Two tours were offered beginning at 7 p.m., to visit the harness shop and barber shop, where they were also served a progressive dinner that culminated with a chicken and dumplings main course in the Wolf dining room. At midnight, guests were treated to a tour of the more paranormal variety, as presented by Underground Living History volunteers.
