Surfing the Interstate highways

It was almost a railroad bed before it became sort of the first interstate highway.

When I started noodling around for interesting things about the interstate highways, I discovered that the much-maligned Pennsylvania Turnpike was a sort of precursor of the interstates. It was built in the 1930's and opened in 1940, a decade or so before the official highway system project in the United States was formalized.

"When the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, it was the first long-distance rural highway in the United States and was popularly known as the "tunnel highway" because of the seven mountain tunnels along its route," Wikipedia states.

What motorists drive on today, however, started out as a railroad bed.

Here's some of the pre-history of the Pennsylvania Turnpike:

According to the Web site www.pumpwarehouse.com, the Pennsylvania Turnpike began life as a railroad, which was started in the 1880s but was never finished. In fact, four-and-a-half miles of tunnels were completed under seven mountains from Laurel Mountain to Blue Mountain.

William Vanderbilt envisioned a high-speed rail line going across Pennsylvania as a way to connect the east coast with Pittsburgh and points west because he could not get competitive freight rates from other lines, the site states.

It was to be called "The South Pennsylvania Railroad," according to a turnpike history at the following link (http://users.zoominternet.net/~jamieo/Turnpike_Page.htm).

After the surveying was complete, work began on a two-track road bed to have nine tunnels, according to pahighways.com. Excavation began on the tunnels in early 1884. Thousands of workers dug the tunnels for $1.25 for a 10 hour day. The construction continued through 1884 and 1885; however, trouble for the project was starting in New York.

“Banker J. Pierpont Morgan won a seat on the board of Vanderbilt's New York City & Hudson River Railroad. Morgan, with the President of the NYC&HRRR, sold the right-of-way to George B. Roberts, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad (a competing line) and work stopped immediately. A total of $10 million had been spent and 26 workers lost their lives. The unfinished project came to be known as ‘Vanderbilt's Folly,’" the Web site states.

Nine tunnels were partially bored and 120 miles of roadbed were graded, the turnpike page site states.

Pumpwarehouse.com states Vanderbilt abandoned the project July 1, 1885, leaving four-and-a-half miles of half-finished tunnels and miles of graded right-of-way.

A part of the right-of-way was used for the Pittsburgh, Westmoreland, and Somerset short line railroad, pahighways.com adds. The PW&S also completed one of the nine tunnels.

None of the other tunnels had been finished when the project was shut down, but workers said that some were close enough to hear crews in the other section. Most of the line reverted to nature with water filling many of the tunnels, the site states.

At the time of the line's demise, an engineer said, "And here, for the time being, and probably for a long time to come, is smothered the best line of railroad between the Ohio Valley and the Atlantic that has ever been or can be projected, built, or operated," the site adds.

According to Wikipedia, in the 1930's, some people who remembered playing on the right-of-way and in the tunnels lobbied the Pennsylvania legislature to study making an "all-weather" highway using Vanderbilt's abandoned right-of-way.

This led to the eventual formation of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and the construction of today's turnpike, Wikipedia states. The original turnpike used most of Vanderbilt's right-of-way and several of the half-finished tunnels for the turnpike. The size of the existing single-track bores, and the available technology of the time dictated that the turnpike tunnels also be single-bore, with one lane of traffic in each direction.

(The picture I linked to above shows the western portal of Rays Hill Tunnel in1884. One site said it was Andrew Carnegie standing in the middle. I have no idea if it was. He never told me he was there, anyway.)

One of these days I'll get around to telling the story of how the "Penna. Turnpike," as the road signs call it, was actually built.