Archaeologists and historians have uncovered new insights about the Underground Railroad and the people who risked their lives to escape enslavers in 19th-century America. With technologies such as thermal drones and laser pulses, scientists have peered through overgrown vegetation and under the ground to find tunnels, caves and refuges that offered respite along the dangerous journey to freedom.
Many freedom seekers fleeing slavery in the United States found a hard-won path to liberty through a system of secret routes, safe houses and hidden way stations known as the Underground Railroad. This escape network operated from roughly 1830 to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, and it arose during the brutal period in the U.S. when white people in Southern states routinely kidnapped, tortured and enslaved African people and their American-born descendents.
