2009 Bockfest Subway Tours

What: The Over-the-Rhine Foundation will be hosting two tours of Cincinnati’s lost subway lines. The tours include a presentation about the subway’s history followed by a guided trip into the abandoned tunnels. Flashlights will be provided. The tour requires walking and portions of the tour can be muddy.

When: Saturday, March 7, 2009 - 11:00AM, 1:00PM and 3:00PM. All tours Sold Out.

Where: All tours will meet at Media Bridges, 1100 Race Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, at the corner of Race and Central Parkway. Media Bridges is a short walk down Central Parkway from the Gateway Garage on the northwest corner of Central Parkway and Vine Street.

Note on Ticket Price: All proceeds of ticket sales will be used by the non-profit Over-the-Rhine Foundation to make Bockfest possible. Unlike some city festivals, Bockfest receives no financial assistance from the city. In fact, the cost of paying for mandatory police patrols and shutting down streets for the Bockfest Parade increases annually; and the costs of leasing and insuring a Bockfest Hall, advertising the event, hiring performers (from bands to goats), and acquiring licenses and permits are all substantial. Bockfest is organized with hundreds of hours of volunteer time. As last year’s Bockfest blizzard proves, all of this work and expenditure can result in significant losses for the charitable OTR Foundation if forces beyond our control fail to cooperate.

Following the September 11th terrorist attacks, the federal Department of Homeland Security ordered the subway lines secured and limited access to the tunnels to 4 times annually. (They “temporarily” house active utility lines.) Tours must be conducted in conjunction with the City of Cincinnati. Due to physical limitations, the number of people permitted on each tour is 50. For these reasons, we can only sell 100 tickets and only a few hundred people are permitted to enter the subway annually. We have priced tickets below what other organizations charge and we will raise significantly less than what we need to conduct Bockfest. By purchasing a ticket, you are helping keep a great Cincinnati tradition alive and are part of a very small number of people who will get to experience the Cincinnati subway in 2009. Thank you for your support.

A Very Brief History of Cincinnati's Subway

Over-the-Rhine gets its name from a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Miami and Erie Canal that used to separate the neighborhood from the downtown business district. By the time the canal was completed in 1845 it was already competing with trains. Since taking the canal from Cincinnati to Dayton was a 20 hour journey, the canal soon lost the competition. By the early 1900s it had become obsolete and served mostly as an open sewer. Most of the canal’s roughly 302 mile stretch from Cincinnati to Toledo was simply filled in, but Cincinnatians decided to use the “Rhine” portion for a subway line topped with an elegant automobile thoroughfare. The canal was drained and subway construction started in 1920. Unfortunately, construction ceased in 1927; and the vision for a grand promenade above it became Central Parkway. Today, the completed sections of subway tunnel remain as they existed when work ceased, sitting eerily ready for a call to service that never came. As plans for a modern streetcar line have been painstakingly researched only to be threatened by ill-informed political attacks, a journey into Cincinnati’s lost subway is a prescient reminder of how a city’s short-term choices can lead it to greatness or sentence it to generations of decline. If you want more details about the subway’s history of inspired vision, corruption, bad luck, folly, and failure, please join us on one of the March 7th tours.