There are plenty of eccentric characters in Evergreen that could use a little love, but a small town’s love budget stretches only so far, and most of our tender mercies are reserved for curiosities acclaimed and/or conspicuous.
The tunnel is neither. And yet kindly hearts and giving hands are even now transforming one of our eldest oddities into le beau passage. We’ll call it “Extreme Makeover: Hole Edition.”
If you frequent local theater, you probably know the tunnel well enough. It burrows under Bear Creek Road between the Church of the Transfiguration and Center Stage. Originally dug in the 1920s to accommodate plumbing, it was expanded in the ’50s to allow pedestrian traffic between the upper and lower campuses of the Episcopal Church Conference.
“Originally dug in the 1920s to accommodate plumbing, it was expanded in the ’50s to allow pedestrian traffic… ”
If you’ve not as yet had occasion to wander down to Main Street’s historic northern quarter, you probably don’t have the faintest idea what we’re talking about and will appreciate a brief description. Unobtrusively anchoring a key junction of the Downtown/Bergen Park trail system, the tunnel is 40 feet long, give or take, maybe 15 hands wide, and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson high. It’s composed of thick, gray corrugated metal sheets arching above a musty cement floor, and dimly lit at night by sickly caged bulbs possibly scavenged from a Soviet fallout shelter. While spacious enough for its purpose, the narrowing roof above may compress the mood of sensitive souls, and deeply furrowed walls provoke stealthy echoes at the slightest sound. The tunnel is virtually indestructible, wonderfully convenient, uniquely historic, and utterly unlovely.
Marilyn Herrs has been pondering the tunnel’s future for the better part of 15 years. An Evergreen Players mainstay, Marilyn appreciates that a good part of her audience passes through it before and after curtain, casting the tunnel in the role of prologue to every performance. Marilyn’s Act I entailed finding out who she needed to ask for permission to re-dress the subterranean stage, a surprisingly dramatic undertaking seeing as how the tunnel has changed administrative hands more than once over the years, often without capturing the notice of its landlord du jour.
“The Colorado Department of Transportation owns the tunnel now,” Marilyn says. “They didn’t know it until I went there to get a permit.”
Gail Riley of Highland Haven Creekside Inn is another interested local who’s long appreciated the humble hole’s aesthetic potential.
“It’s ripe for being an experience,” Gail says. “I don’t know why something wasn’t done earlier.”
As a former Evergreen Legacy Fund (ELF) board member, Gail directed the creation of the vast mural beneath the downtown pedestrian underpass and the gorgeous illustrations on the Evergreen Metropolitan District (EMD) facility at Evergreen Dam. While a small project by comparison, trimming the tunnel presents challenges uncommon to the muralist’s craft. For one thing, the whole of the mural will be effectively confined inside of a tube. And anyway, what doth it profit to exalt the cloistered middle without setting an appropriate stage at either end?
“Financial support to date has been enthusiastic, but limited, and they’re still a long way from covering the project’s estimated $15,000 price tag… ”
As scripted, the grassy slopes north and south will get a thorough botanical reboot, imaginative landscaping providing attractive introduction to the wonders within. Beyond them, a telescoping kaleidoscope of hearts will enfold pedestrians entering the tunnel from the south, while from the north side pedestrians will plunge into a brilliant floral fantasia, all of it theatrically aglow in bright new lighting.
For interior artistry, Gail and Marilyn have enlisted the immense talents of award-winning Colorado muralist Bobby Magee Lopez, the eloquent brush behind the EMD facility’s bright public bouquet. Preparing the canvas has been the province of ardent volunteers, weeding, cleaning and sculpting the ground around.
“When you step out of the tunnel, you should see something just as beautiful,” Gail says. “I would love to see gardens and beautiful art installations on both ends.”
Although one of Evergreen’s most unassuming amenities, the tunnel is well-known and well trod by people with business or pleasure in that district, and neighbors are lining up to do their part. Friends of the tunnel who’ve pledged support, often in the way of sweat and sinew, include the Church of the Transfiguration, Lariat Lodge, Ovation West (which has been paying the tunnel’s electric bill all along), the Evergreen Players and Center Stage. JP Total has valiantly stepped up on behalf of the landscaping.
It’s natural to think that, when all labors are complete, the upgraded underpass will deserve a better name than “the tunnel.” As one would expect, Marilyn and Gail sought the best available counsel on that momentous matter.
“I took my granddaughter, Maizy, over to see it, and she just loved it,” Gail says. “She immediately named it the ‘Tunnel of Love.’”
And so it is. Work on the Tunnel of Love is set to begin in earnest this month and, to their great credit, Marilyn and Gail have produced a superb vision, a crack team, and a great name. What they don’t have yet is sufficient scratch to see the Tunnel of Love Project through to the other side. Financial support to date has been enthusiastic, but limited, and they’re still a long way from covering the project’s estimated $15,000 price tag, much of it earmarked for the electrical enhancements.
If you’d like to help illuminate a singular slice of Evergreen history, your donation will be gratefully accepted at bit.ly/4gyT1d7, or you can simply scan the QR code included hereon.
For pipes or for peeps, the Tunnel of Love has been holding up its end for 100 years, and this is our chance to return the favor. Just a little love—that’s all.
