|
 |
|
There’s a reason John Henry became a legend. When
the steel-driving man engaged in his famous contest with
a steam-powered drill, he was working on a tunnel. Specifically,
the Big Bend Tunnel in Talcott, W.Va. The project was
part of a 19th-century effort to expand the railroad west
across Virginia from the Atlantic. In one tall tale, the
six-foot former slave (who may never have existed), won
the contest against the drill, but keeled over dead from
exhaustion.
In the mid-19th-century, before the steam shovel, jack
hammers and other modern construction machines, it took
hundreds of men with picks, shovels, mules and wagons
to dig a railroad tunnel. Tunnels were necessary in the
mountains of western Virginia because of physics. The
steeper an incline, the harder it was for an engine to
pull a load of cars. It had to overcome more friction.
Without tunnels, railroads had to buy more powerful engines,
use shorter trains or put extra engines on through mountainous
terrain. It wasn’t cost efficient in the long run.
Before the Civil War, the Virginia Central Railroad was
the first to use railroad tunnels, built at state expense,
to cross the Blue Ridge at Rockfish Gap. The company later
became part of the more well-known Chesapeake and Ohio
Railroad.
The most infamous railroad tunnel in Virginia was the
Church Hill Tunnel in Richmond, built in the 1870s when
coal trains needed access to the James River. A viaduct
replaced the tunnel in 1901, but it was reopened in 1925.
In October of the same year, the tunnel collapsed on a
work train, killing an engineer and at least two additional
employees. According to a Richmond Times-Dispatch
news story at the time, during the attempted rescue “more
than 75,000 persons visited the scene during the day,
many of them remaining from early morning until late last
night.” The tunnel was sealed in 1926 and never
used again. (See Richmond
Then and Now.)
While railroad tunnels were the Old Dominion’s first
civil engineering feats, it is their vehicular cousins
that now bring accolades to the Commonwealth. When the
Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel opened in 1964, it was declared
“one of the seven man-made wonders of the world”
in a global competition. The combination bridge-tunnel
project connects the Norfolk and Virginia Beach area with
Virginia’s Eastern Shore. It has since been bumped
off the list by the Channel Tunnel, nicknamed the Chunnel,
which is the 31-mile tunnel between Great Britain and
France. (See Chesapeake
Bay Bridge-Tunnel History.)
But of the 50 longest road tunnels in the U.S., Virginia
has eight, topped only by Pennsylvania. The longest Virginia
tunnel is the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel at 7,479 feet,
followed by the Thimble Shoal Tunnel, a part of the Chesapeake
Bay Bridge-Tunnel project. (One mile = 5,280 feet.) It
measures 5,734 feet. The next longest is the Chesapeake
Channel Tunnel at 5,423 feet, also a part of the tunnel-bridge
project, but completed in 1999. (Road
Tunnels in the U.S.)
Perhaps the most unusual tunnel project was the East River
Mountain Tunnel, completed in 1973. It straddles the Virginia-West
Virginia state lines, with the boundary actually within
the tunnel. The tunnel carries I-77 between Rocky Gap,
Va., and Bluefield, W.Va., through East River Mountain.
Prior to its construction, the trip over the mountain
was arduous and sometimes dangerous on a twisting highway
with no guardrails. At 5,412 feet, it is the third longest
tunnel in the state and the seventh longest twin highway
tunnel in the U.S.
Groundbreaking took place on August 12, 1969. At the ceremony,
the governors of both states pushed a plunger that created
an explosion with red, white and blue smoke. For the next
five years, crews from each state bored four tunnels from
opposite sides of the mountain, finally meeting each other
in the middle. As with many such projects, there were
unforeseen obstacles. Sinkholes appeared because of caves
under the mountain, and once the tunnel dropped two feet.
Deer continued to disturb stakes on the top of the mountain
that marked where digging was taking place. Finally, the
workers imported lion manure to stop the foraging creatures
from interrupting construction. The tunnel finally opened
in 1974. Forty-nine percent of it sits in the Commonwealth
and the other 51 percent belongs to West Virginia. (See
Bland
County History Archives.)
Virginia’s other tunnels have idiosyncrasies as
well. According to a trucking journal, "Land
Line Magazine," when the westbound tunnel facility
of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel was built in 1957,
it accommodated the height of trucks of that era. It is
just not tall enough for some modern truck designs. The
eastbound tunnel was built 15 years later and has no such
problem. Thus, taller trucks can travel eastbound to Virginia
Beach, but have to return by an alternate route. Some
trucks try to sneak through by lowering their suspension
(called air dumps) and cause traffic jams when sensors
detect them. They have to be turned around before entering
the tunnel. The General Assembly, in an effort to stop
the practice, just raised the fine from $85 to $500 and
adds three points to a truck driver’s record if
they try to sneak through. (See "Land
Line Magazine.")
Most of the Commonwealth’s other major tunnels are
located in the Newport News-Norfolk-Portsmouth area because
the U.S. Navy, which has a large presence there, prefers
tunnels to bridges over the wide waterways. They are considered
less vulnerable to enemy or terrorist attacks. These include
the Monitor Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel, which connects
Newport News with Suffolk, opened in 1992, and the Downtown
Tunnel and the Midtown Tunnel that connect Norfolk and
Portsmouth under the Elizabeth River. The Downtown Tunnel
opened in 1952 and the Midtown Tunnel 10 years later.
The final major Virginia tunnel is the exception. It is
the 4,229-foot Big Walker Mountain Tunnel, located 20
miles south of its larger East Mountain Tunnel cousin
near Bland, Va. John Henry may have lost his life hammering
out a tunnel, but that didn’t deter those who followed.
Virginia stretched much farther west in Henry’s
day.
As the lyrics to the famous folk song go, “Some
say he's from Georgia/Some say he’s from Alabam/
But it’s wrote on the rock at the Big Ben Tunnel/
That he’s an East Virginia Man/ That he’s
an East Virginia Man.”
August 23, 2005
Nice & Curious
|
Last Modified:
Friday, June 27, 2008
|
|
|
