Secrets Underground: North America's Buried Past

by Elizabeth MacLeod, Michael Martchenko (Illustrator)

Overview

Uncover the spine-tingling mysteries and eerie surprises that lurk right under your feet!

In Secrets Underground, history buff Elizabeth MacLeod takes readers deep down, down, down below the earth’s surface, and introduces them to a completely different world—sometimes terrifying, often baffling, and always fascinating.

Discover:
• the Civil War secrets carefully concealed in Organ Cave, West Virginia
• the top-secret equipment that lies deep below Grand Central Terminal in New York City
• the network of tunnels in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, that once hid victims of persecution—and illegal liquor transported by notorious Chicago gangsters
• how the Aztec city TenochtitlÁn, the largest and most powerful city of its time in what is now North America, nearly disappeared without a trace
• the abandoned ships buried beneath San Francisco that reveal the city’s history as a top destination for fortune seekers during the Gold Rush
• the nuclear shelter the U.S. government kept hidden for decades underneath an exclusive resort in West Virginia called The Greenbrier.

Guiding readers through these fascinating places, MacLeod reveals their long-kept secrets and deftly explains how these lost and hidden subterranean passages, spaces, and caves answer decades-old puzzles, help us understand our own past, and lead us to discover what life was really like in eras gone by.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781554516315
Publisher:	Annick Press, Limited
Publication date:	01/09/2014
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1050L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 14 Years

About the Author

Elizabeth MacLeod is a prolific author of non-fiction books for children, including Bones Never Lie and the Red Maple Award-winning Royal Murder. She lives in Toronto.

Table of Contents

Secrets Buried Deep Underground 1

Hidden Temples: The biggest city in North America, buried for 500 years 3

The Place: Mexico City, Mexico

The Big Event: The Spanish Conquest of Mexico (1519-1521)

Buried Sailing Ships: The town built on top of boats 15

The Place: San Francisco, California

The Big Event: The California Gold Rush (1848-1855)

Undercover Soldiers: The cave with an explosive secret 27

The Place: Organ Cave, West Virginia

The Big Event: The American Civil War (1861-1865)

Gangsters Belowground: The little place on the prairie that became a crime hub 39

The Place: Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada

The Big Event: Prohibition (1918-1933)

The War Beneath: The top-secret machinery that moved a nation 53

The Place: New York City

The Big Event: World War II (1939-1945)

Politicians Deep Down: The resort that hid a nuclear shelter 65

The Place: The Greenbrier, West Virginia

The Big Event: The Cold War (1945-1991)

Time Line 78

Places to Visit 80

Main Sources 81

Further Reading 83

Photo Credits 85

Index 86

Editorial Reviews

2014-06-04
MacLeod digs into historical records (though not particularly deeply) to shine a light on selected tunnels and other underground installations that have fallen into obscurity.Her chosen sites, evidently selected more for geographical spread than similarity, range from the ruins of Tenochtitlán’s Templo Mayor below Mexico City and a West Virginia cave that became an important secret source of saltpeter for the Confederacy to tunnels beneath Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, used by Chinese immigrants and bootleggers, and a huge bomb shelter built for Congress during the Cold War. All have intriguing histories, though much of what the author relates is speculative or, like the scene-setting miniepisodes that open each chapter, invented to crank up the drama. She also doesn’t consistently drill down to specific details about how these subterranean wonders were constructed or, in more modern times, reconstructed. Furthermore, though most of the images and period photos add informative visual notes, some filler has been mixed in, and several sidebars are poorly placed—being, at best, only marginally related to adjacent passages.Still, this will give general readers hints of what draws spelunkers and urban archaeologists to probe below our planet’s surface. (Nonfiction. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews

The stories in this book are well researched and thought-provoking, providing an illuminating glimpse into the dark history buried under our daylight world.

Readerly, National Reading Campaign - Charis Cotter

MacLeod has produced yet another immensely readable, engaging piece of middle-grade nonfiction with wide appeal.

Resource Links - Jaclyn McLean

08/01/2014
Gr 4–8—What mysteries are buried under our modern cities? How were those underground places used? This book attempts to look at North America's buried secrets from a historic point of view. Beginning with Mexico City's foundation on the Aztec city of Tenochtitá and moving chronologically across the rest of North America to include buried ships in San Francisco from the Gold Rush; a West Virginia cave used by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War; Prohibition-era underground tunnels of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan; New York City's buried machinery during World War II; and a giant bunker in West Virginia used during the Cold War. Chapters open with a short narrative meant to hook readers and then give a description of the underground structure and its historical significance. However, students may lose interest, as the historical background is a trifle circuitous and takes precedent, leaving little room for exploration of the subterranean areas. There are surprisingly few actual photos of the caves and tunnels, and what the book does have are small sized. The sidebars are filled with ancillary information that doesn't always enhance or complement the text. Readers who are drawn to historical mysteries may be disappointed.—Patricia Feriano, Our Lady of Mercy School, Potomac, MD

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