jamius.com

One of my friends lifelong dreams has always been to design and dig his own system of tunnels. He finally just this spring found the correct piece of property in northern Wisconsin that has the correct geology (soft sandstone), accessibility (an hour from Minneapolis), and landscape (bluff face) to make his dream a reality. He has purchased 12 acres of the property, and has deemed it "Sandland". Sandland is a place of wonder and magic, a playground for several of our friends, where we can build pretty much whatever we want, so long as we take responsibility for what we do and don't intrude on others rights.

Slim Jim (the owner) has designed his own labyrinth of crawl-tunnels that he's going to dig into the property, and place a party / sleeping room at the end. After the initial dig is finished to the main chamber, there is going to be other digging projects made, mostly in the name of a stage area and/or some other halls, but this will all come later. He's already purchased a small generator, powerful drill, and modified a dirt auger to hopefully do the majority of the work. We've successfully dug tunnels with both angle grinders and chainsaws, and both of these will be tried if the auger fails. We've also talked about a waterblasting system, like cities and dig companies use, but Jim is likely unable to afford the 20,000 dollars to have a well dug on the property to get the constant water required. It would be much easier to use, and has much less healh hazards associated with dry mining, but I guess we don't have much choice.

The other major project that is happening is a series of treehouses (think ewok style). 4 or 5 of us are on board right now, and we're working out the design kinks for the first main treehouse, and later individual or specialty houses will be built branching off and connected by bridges.

Other things going on the property are a swimming hole (there is a small seasonal stream with a sandstone bottom that we're going to make sandbags out of the removed tunnel material), a minimum of two ziplines going from bluff to bluff, and a campground complete with wood / tool sheds, fire pit, and parking spot, with a possible outhouse as well. We're also considering making a large "SANDLAND" sign above the entrance road, like you would see at a summer camp. Trampoline may be in the future as well, but we would need to either level out part of the valley or build a base.


I've been trying to get Jim to make his road to the digsite in Jaimie's human-bulldozer style, but that won't be happening...

Sounds like a fun project. Take extra precautions with the tunnels, as I'm sure you guys are aware. And go make some dreams come true, haha. Keep improving it and you can't go wrong.

I've been looking to put in 150' zipline on some property of my parents, might get to it this summer. Ziplines seem to have a really good fun-to-dollar ratio.