OMG -- not just a correction or a retraction but admission they didn't do their homework!

Front page news in Peoria --
http://www.pjstar.com/news/x227166333/Peoria-tunnel-likely-wasnt-used-to-hide-slaves

That a concrete and cinder block tunnel under a house on Garden Street in Peoria was NOT used to hide slaves or route them northward to safety via "The Underground Railroad".

That's right -- the news today differs 180 degrees from the new yesterday --
..that they stumbled on a tremendous piece of history in finding this tunnel that was part of the Underground Railroad, but today the news is that it was NOT -- in other words -- the front page news today was...
"We are bozos and the entire front page story from yesterday was wrong -- plus poorly researched and run without checking any facts at all!"

They have to know - that they're going to get a little ribbing over this bonehead mistake!

So this tunnel was not part of the Underground Railroad....
Duhhh....ya think??? Here's where the story is so sad and silly that it isn't even funny...especially in light of the headlines just yesterday saying that likely this was used in the Underground Railroad...

First -- and foremost - the Underground Railroad has been thoroughly studied and researched and every schoolkid learns about it in grade school. So how do the reporters from this newspaper made such an incredibly absurd misjudgement and jump to the most insane wrong conclusions??

It's not like this hasn't happened before...

About a decade ago while doing some repairs on a downtown street in Peoria -- a cave-in revealed a brick-lined cavern and immediately the local newspaper ran stories linking this structure with the Underground Railroad....that is until someone with a slight bit of intelligence simply looked into the structure and saw it was constructed with turn-of-the-20th-century bricks as a way to route runoff water from the Peoria streets towards the river.

Even then - almost every person in American knows that the Underground Railroad was NEITHER underground nor was it a railroad...so structures like these simply have easier explanations -- and it's silly to just jump to absurd conclusions then run it as a story!
This isn't too much different than people who see a crop circle and conclude it HAD to have been aliens...
I wonder what they'd have said about this crop circle...
http://media.photobucket.com/image/crop%20circle%20fake/pijion/olores/Crop-Circles2.jpg

Or I have to think if a crop circle was found in the shape and design of a Bud Light can - then the media would have headlines saying...
"Aliens proven to enjoy earth beverages"

And .. just four years ago they made the same mistake over in Bloomington when they ran stories about an old house that supposed to have been part of the Underground Railroad - but then a simple fact check showed the story to be "so much hooey" (their own words!!)....and was totally false.
http://www.pantagraph.com/news/article_d9a40c35-0a14-5bd6-b76f-7073a03b9f40.html

Even the most uneducated and naive can simply look up any of the thousands of references anywhere covering the "Underground Railroad" and see that they all say things like this...

"The escape network was not literally underground
nor a railroad. It was figuratively "underground" in the
sense of being an underground resistance."

".. consisted of meeting points, secret routes,
transportation, and safe houses, and assistance
provided by abolitionist sympathizers."
(not underground tunnels 300 miles from the nearest point in Dixie)

And then this comment from one historical site...
"all historians agree, that there were generally no tunnels"

" The underground railroad was a
figure of speech. Kind of like the French underground ...
The Underground Railroad used no tunnels..."

Then even this -- one exhaustive study of the Underground Railroad in Iowa says this...
"The UGRR was neither a railroad nor was it underground."

All these quotes come from solid references on the UGRR that would have been simple for anyone to check before running with the erroneous story yesterday.
So just maybe we can put this idea to rest....
One online site has an entire chapter debunking the tunnel argument...

"Tunnels

...If you open the cellar door [of the Jordan House]
from the outside and look down into the basement,
the stairway and entry made of stone almost look like
a tunnel, especially to a child.”

And that, John Zeller says, would be one reason
those tunnel stories won’t go away. Zeller, a historian
working on the Iowa Freedom Trail Program, says
claims of secret rooms and tunnels often turn out to
be local lore. “I’m always encountering people who
know about the tunnels,” he says. “They say, ‘My
grandmother used to play in the tunnel when she was
a little girl.’ But I think those grandmothers had been
told that about the Underground Railroad and imagine
they played in tunnels as children.

In not one place has any archaeologist found a tunnel."


"....the National Park Service is skeptical about
tunnels. “A study of reputed tunnels in 17 UGRR
sites ... found no tunnels — no underground hiding
places,” he reports. “Documented hiding places
include attics, bedrooms, kitchens, or barns, not
tunnels.”

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache:dbLL58-HN_MJ:http://www.iowan.com/underground_railroad_jf2005.cfm+%22underground+railroad%22+and+%22no+tunnels%22&ct=clnk

Then lastly -- most researchers conclude there were numerous routes that slaves were helped along but Peoria is NOT one of them. There were sympathizers of the anti-slavery movement but there's little question about slaves being routed through Peoria -- they were not.

Then of course - as if you needed any more simple fact or logic -- even a child would know that the UGRR would have vanished after the Civil War, or more specifically the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 -- thus all those structures on Garden Street would have had to date back to 1862 and beyond.
Come on ...there just weren't any churches and houses in that part of Peoria that far back -- and again, a simple check of facts readily available on public record would have confirmed that....and the house in quesiton was built in the 1930's -- surely they would have known that!!

I especially like one comment from this morning's "retraction" article...
"Linda Aylward and Chris Farris, both reference assistants at the Peoria Public Library's local history and genealogy department...tried to uncover the truth about the tunnel.

"I read the story (in the Journal Star) this morning and I thought, 'Let's debunk this,'" said Farris."

This guy is my kind of guy -- he knows his stuff, he checks facts, and he likes to debunk stupidity and ignorance!
Maybe a newspaper ought to hire people like this!!!!


By the way - if you want a little MORE humor in this vein -- did you see that the DAUGHTER of Martin Luther King, Jr. just said publicly?
Probably you did not -- since most media intentionally declines to cover comments that make certain people look stupid...but had George Bush said this, or Dick Cheney, or Sarah Palin, or Rush Limbaugh you'd have had jokes about it on front pages everywhere and on every talk show and comedy show!!!

MLK's daughter CLAIMED that Abraham Lincoln signed the Declaration of Independence!!!
Here are her exact words...
"Lincoln remembered for signing the Declaration of Independence. Daddy (her daddy being MLK, Jr.) being remembered as standing up for truth.."http://www.the950.com/pages/michaelberry.html?article=9045154
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/mlks-daughter-on-abe-lincoln-hes-known-for-signing-declaration-of-independence/

And we wonder why half of our school kids don't even know who Abraham Lincoln was.....