Paw paw tunnel series#

In 1889 more rock falls at the tunnel and a major flood caused extensive damage to the waterway, and navigation was suspended for eighteen months.The Paw Paw Tunnel is a 3,118-foot-long (950 m) canal tunnel on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O) in Allegany County, Maryland. Rock slides in the deep cut below Paw Paw Tunnel in November 1857 and the spring of 1858 stopped navigation for more than two months. Just two years after the tunnel opened, a major flood damaged the canal. Maintenance difficulties plagued the canal and the tunnel. In 1875, the canal carried 904,898 tons of coal alone. Millions of tons of coal, agricultural products, lumber, stone, and industrial goods passed through the tunnel from Cumberland and her hinterlands. Though the board imposed a $10 penalty for violating the regulation, the tunnel remained a bottleneck for boats. In 1872, the canal board hired a watchman to regulate traffic night and day and established rules for boats navigating through. The great increase in canal trade during the early 1870s resulted in frequent and lengthy delays at the tunnel while the boats waited their turn to enter. One standoff lasted several days until a company official threw green cornstalks onto a roaring fire at the upwind end and forced the offenders out with smoke. This didn't always work, however, and from time to time canal boats, with their stubborn captains, would meet in the middle. A boy was sent ahead to post a lantern at the other end, so that an oncoming boat would know that the tunnel was already occupied and would wait turn. Bitter arguments would go on when two boats would meet in the middle. The first boat to arrive at either end had the right of way. The channel through the tunnel was narrow, providing no room for passing or turning. On October 10, 1850, the tunnel opened for navigation. The firm of McCulloch and Day completed the tunnel quickly. Due to lack of funds, work was suspended from 1842 to 1847. Tensions escalated in 1837, 1838, and 1839 when workers used beatings, destruction of property, and other forms of physical violence to halt construction. Montgomery’s Irish labor force clashed with one another and with newcomers who competed for their jobs. Montgomery hired miners from England and Wales, and German masons from Pennsylvania. Unskilled workers, rising labor costs, poor living conditions, and the slow pace of construction led to labor strife at the tunnel.

While Montgomery predicted he could bore seven to eight feet per day, his crew working three shifts daily managed to bore through the hard, loose shale just 10 to 12 feet per week. Vertical shafts from the hilltop down to tunnel level provided extra working faces in each direction. Workers used black powder to blast through rock, used picks and shovels, and hauled out rubble by horse carts. Lee Montgomery, a Methodist pastor turned contractor, hired a crew and began work on the tunnel in June 1836. Two other men responsible for building of the tunnel were Fisk's assistant, Elwood Morris and the contractor, Lee Montgomery. Fourteen years later when the 3,118-foot tunnel opened, it cost more than $600,000. Labor violence, funding shortfalls, and work stoppages slowed construction. When work started in June 1836 on the Paw Paw Tunnel engineers estimated the work would take just two years and $33,500 to complete. Even when work was well advanced the board of directors seriously contemplated abandonment of the partially completed tunnel in favor of a dam. and, due largely to enthusiastic advocacy of newly appointed engineer, Charles B. The alternatives were thoroughly debated within the canal Co. To have followed river would have required either crossing to West Virginia shore and back hacking out canal along those cliffs or damming river at lower end of bend to form a slack-water and cutting a towpath along cliffs or putting towpath on West Virginia side. While tunnel route involved cutting thru 3118' of solid rock, the Maryland shore of river route contains some impressive cliffs coming right down to the river.

Paw paw tunnel series#

Here the river makes a series of gargantuan loops the tunnel route cutting across one large double loop takes 1 m where river takes six. The Paw Paw Tunnel is one of the major features of the canal, built as a bypass to some very difficult terrain along the Potomac River in Paw Paw Bends.