After working in one job for 29 years, many people are tired, burned out and ready for something new.

But for Jo Simonian, who has led the Seattle Underground Tour since 1980 and still manages to smile and crack cheesy puns with the tourists every time, this isn’t the case.

With slightly frizzy hair — no doubt related to the humidity and rain of the day — and a typical Seattle uniform of blue jeans, a sweater and Teva sandals, Simonian greets our group with enthusiasm and leads us into Doc Maynard’s Public House, a pub fashioned like a Wild West saloon with chandeliers, wood paneling and a musty old feel to it.

Simonian asks the group where everyone is from and calls on those who raise their hands. It turns out that there are people from as close as Tacoma and as far away as Australia. I feel somewhat embarrassed to be a local — I’ve lived in the Seattle area for 10 years and have never taken the tour. This is my first Underground Tour experience, and it’s better late than never.

We walk outside and cross the street, heading toward a set of stairs leading down into the underground. Although it’s now May, it’s chilly, gray and raining.

Simonian talks fast and excitedly, with the enthusiasm of someone who obviously loves her job. In the peak seasons of spring and summer, she gives as many as 14 tours each week, yet still manages to muster up the energy to entertain and educate each crowd, tailoring her jokes to fit the dynamic of the particular group.

“Sometimes if there are a lot of babies and small children, I try to keep them entertained and give them little ‘jobs’ to do so they feel special,” Simonian told me after the tour.

Today, there are two children, a boy and a girl, ages 8 and 7. Simonian tells them to go down first “to scare the rats away.” They flinch, but she reassures them.

“I’m just kidding, you guys,” she says.

We head down, and I can’t help but feel nervous. Are there really rats? It smells musty and old, as I expected, and is dimly lit by a few lightbulbs. We step onto a wooden bridge, and I see pipes with cobwebs hanging from them and piles of rubble on the sides. It’s mostly barren, with just a few photographs of late 19th-century Seattle mounted on the walls.

Simonian launches into the history of the underground. Apparently, it all started with the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, which destroyed some 25 blocks of mostly wooden buildings. Before the fire, the city was mostly built on soggy tideflats, and whenever the rain would come, the streets would fill with mud and swallow up children and small animals. After the fire ravaged the city, it was decided that all future buildings must be made of stone or brick. The city also decided to build above the mud in which the original streets were built, creating the underground.

Eight years later, in 1897, the Yukon Gold Rush hit the city, bringing 100,000 adventure-seekers to Seattle, including a host of “unsavory” types such as gamblers, conmen and prostitutes. Even after the rush ended, these residents stayed in the area, but more respectable types moved uptown, and Pioneer Square soon became forgotten.

The original birthplace of Seattle remained undisturbed for nearly 60 years, until Bill Speidel decided it might be a good idea to preserve it. In May of 1965, he and his wife Shirley decided to start giving tours for a dollar a piece, and that first day, they gave tours to 500 people. It was an overnight success.

Simonian continues to narrate the history of Seattle, and it’s often hard to catch everything as she talks so fast. I admire the photos on the walls: The women are wearing elaborate updos and long dresses, and the men all have mustaches, bowler hats atop their heads and full suits. A streetcar is being pulled by horses. It’s such a trip to think that this is real and that my great-great grandparents looked like that.

She asks the crowd if they have questions, and one tourist asks how the fire was started. She explains that it all began with an apprentice in a cabinet-making shop who started a glue fire while at work. He poured water on it, but that only fed the fire and helped it spread, and it didn’t help that the liquor store next door had received a massive whiskey shipment the night before. In just five hours, the fire had spread over many blocks.

We continue to walk through the underground maze, stopping at various points for Simonian to give us more history lessons. Before we know it, the tour is over, we’re back where we started, and we exit through the gift shop. As the crowd heads out, they seem generally impressed with what they just saw and learned.

“I thought the history was really fascinating,” said Amanda Stamp of Washington, D.C., who is visiting Seattle for the first time. “I was expecting it to be different, though, with more of the original storefronts or actual buildings. I did learn a lot, though, and it was worth the admission cost.”

Simonian mills through the gift shop answering people’s questions. Still amazed at her energy and enthusiasm, I ask her what her favorite part of the job is.

“Oh, meeting all the people who come on the tours,” she says. “Each group has its own personality, some are quiet and some are lively. Each one is new and different, and I get to meet people from all over. I also have the most amazing coworkers, and the owners have been incredible to us.”

When I ask her if, after almost three decades of leading the tour, she has any plans to retire, she vigorously shakes her head.

“I hope I stay till I die,” she says, chuckling. “In fact, I very well might die down there, and then I’ll be a part of the tour myself. That’s a joke we have here about tour guides.”

Reach reporter Katie Paff at features@dailyuw.com.