ELLSWORTH ? A renovation project on a downtown building has uncovered an apparent underground retail area from turn-of-the-century Ellsworth.

Mark and Josie Roehrman discovered the mall after they bought the E.W. Wellington store, built in 1898 by a wealthy rancher. The Roehrmans’ initial plan was to restore the second floor and provide added space for consignment antiques.

During the renovation, a crumbling wall was lifted away, revealing another wall. Then, a layer of concrete was jackhammered away, leading to an underground brick sidewalk. More work unearthed walls and storefronts, an area the Roehrmans now call Underground Ellsworth.

“We don’t realize what the generation before us was living in,” Ellsworth historian Jim Gray said.

Gray said digging up details of Underground Ellsworth’s history will require much more research, but it appeared to be an experiment that didn’t work.

“It didn’t last long, and so little was spoken of it by grandparents and great-grandparents,” he said.

Some of the answers may lie in old newspapers yet to be researched, he said. But Gray isn’t surprised that a bowling alley was located in the underground, he said, because the sport was popular in that era.

“Bowling alleys were associated directly with saloon activity, and proper women and families didn’t attend,” he said.