When it comes to Jacob’s Run, Wilmington is like the character Fox Mulder from supernatural ’90s TV show “The X-Files”: We want to believe.
We want to believe that the bricked-in tunnels beneath the streets of downtown Wilmington, whose origins likely date to before the American Revolution, were used as escape routes to freedom by enslaved Black people or imprisoned Patriots, or served as channels for pirates and criminals to smuggle their ill-gotten goods. Perhaps young lovers once met down there to conduct clandestine affairs.
We want to believe. Unfortunately, at least for the romantics among us, pretty much every credible source and nearly every shred of evidence points to a much less glamorous conclusion: that the winding tunnels that make up Jacob’s Run led to the Cape Fear River because it formed part of early Wilmington’s sewer and drainage system.
According to a 2011 story by retired StarNews writer Ben Steelman, back in 1972 a retired civil engineer and amateur historian named Charles B. Foard told the paper that Jacob’s Run was “just private sewers.” In reporting that story, StarNews reporter John Randt and photographer Herman Benton went down into the tunnels in ’72, perhaps looking for evidence that might support the legends. What they found was brickwork that, as Steelman notes, was “in surprisingly good condition.”