NEWFANE, Vt. (AP) – Some say the brick-lined tunnel recently discovered underneath the Four Columns Inn could have been part of the Underground Railroad.

Others aren’t so sure.

Debbie and Bruce Pfander are renovating the 170-year-old building from top to bottom. The passage was discovered while workers were installing a new sprinkler system last week.

The hole in the floor is about 3 feet long and 2 feet wide. It drops directly down and bends sharply to the west, traveling underneath the cellar floor.

“You can see it here,” said head contractor Lew Teich, shining a flashlight into a smaller hole in the middle of the floor. “It definitely goes on.”

The possibility that Newfane was a stopping point for slaves has long drifted around the periphery of the southern Vermont town’s history.

“No one knows for sure,” said Charlie Marchant of the Townshend Historical Society. “The Underground Railroad was a secret society. And even in histories that were written back then, it was not something they bragged about.”

Marchant said the original owner of the inn, Pardon Kimball, is described in a 1875 book as holding “frequent meetings of men.” He said that some have interpreted that as proof the inn was a slave stopover point.

“But no one really knows,” Marchant said.

He also said research has shown that the towns along the West River were known as places where slaves could find safe haven.

“I am not an expert, but I haven’t seen any conclusive proof. I would be suspect,” Marchant said.

At the inn’s front desk, Lisa Thomas called historical society members and teachers in the area.

Her daughter once did a school project on the Underground Railroad in southern Vermont.

“She really studied it up and down and she did a map, but I don’t remember the Four Columns Inn being on the list,” she said. “It is odd the way the brick looks so different from the other stone work in the basement.”

AP-ES-05-02-04 1007EDT