XV

TUNNEL BLAST ON THANKSGIVING DAY

THE great material romance of northwestern Massachusetts was the building of the Hoosac Tunnel. In a period not very remote, difficult to the point of impossibility seemed the undertaking of opening a passage four and three quarters miles long beneath the mountain barrier which halted railroad trains on the east and the west. Concord coaches running over the mountain where the Mohawk Trail highway now is linked the Troy and Boston and Fitchburg railroads. The stages were handled by amazingly skillful drivers, and that mountain ride made a very beautiful interlude in the railroad journey. But the interruption was unsatisfactory as a business proposition. Scenery, however noble, must not be permitted to interfere with long hauls of freight.

Hope of a western connection for Massachusetts by way of Berkshire was early cherished and its realization long delayed. It was under consideration in the form of a canal or railroad as early as 1826, but because of the obstacle of the Hoosac Mountain preference was given to the southern route through Springfield. There was the dawn of the Western Railroad Corporation, forerunner of the Boston and Albany Railroad, to which the State lent its credit.

Later the people of the northern part of the State secured what became the Fitchburg Railroad from Boston to Greenfield.

In 1848 the Troy and Greenfield Railroad was incorporated, and its projectors lightly engaged to put its tracks under the Hoosac Mountain. For long that project existed only on paper. Towns along the way in time, to their lasting financial discomfiture, bonded themselves in behalf of the shadowy enterprise. Disappointed hopes lay beside the long trail from 1848 to 1873. To get sense of this one should view the hole made by a rock-cutting machine in 1851 near the eastern portal. It progressed for ten feet and then failed to work, was abandoned and a new start made. In 1858 General Herman Haupt had high hopes of a boring machine that failed. Work on the tunnel proceeded with many interruptions. The accomplishment of the enterprise at a cost of over twenty million dollars and a toll of one hundred ninety-six lives "was memorable", says the Encyclopedia Britannica, "for the original use in America of air drills and nitro-glycerin." That dry historical statement merits enlargement.

Belief in the possibility and necessity of piercing the mountain became an article of faith with inhabitants of the region to be advantaged. The sentiment prevailed that at all costs the tunnel must be put through. To this creed eminent citizens were true at some moral cost in matters of legislation. The doctrine that the end justified the means served to obtain favorable votes for the project in many sessions of the Legislature. "I have waited twenty-five years

to write this editorial," remarked the elder Bowles as he embodied in his comments on the blast which connected the east and west headings the statement that during the process of building the Hoosac Tunnel the logroll became a fine art on Beacon Hill.

The introduction of machine drills driven by compressed air, the firing of the charges by electricity, and the use of nitro-glycerin, -the latter manufactured by Professor George Mowbray, an interesting gentleman - sped the final stages of the undertaking. Out of the skepticism of many years, during which the completion of the tunnel was regarded as a synonym for the impossible, came the achievement of the blast that opened the passage from east to west. Oliver Wendell Holmes had prophesied that the completion of the tunnel would be coincident with the advent of the millennium. But the historic explosion that marked the beginning of the end of the long endeavor was fixed for Thanksgiving Day, 1873, and in preparation for the event I was sent to study the situation and write the story of the years that made ready for it. The resultant nine columns of matter constituted an astonishing display for those days, but in order to get in so much it had been necessary to sacrifice a column or two of description much valued by the writer, and the necessary slaughter wrung the heart of the novice.

That preliminary study deepened the love I had for the Berkshire hills, so dear to every son of Williams. A classmate, when returning to Williamstown, reverently uncovered his head always at first sight of "The Mountains", and a spiritual uncovering we all have,

even though the outward act be withheld. The benediction that falls from mountains is a positive factor in character building, let whoever may make light of it.

Many people I saw who had battled for the building of the tunnel during a lifetime, men of Franklin and Berkshire counties. Among them stands out the figure of fine old Roger H. Leavitt of Charlemont, who had preserved every written word about the enterprise that came under his eyes. His memory was a storehouse of knowledge regarding all the steps that had been taken, and many things I learned from him. He promised to leave to me his scrapbooks and documents, for I dreamed of some day writing a book about the tunnel. But as life grew complicated I forgot, and so did he. It is to be hoped that Roger Leavitt's valuable papers have abiding care in some historical society or library.

After studying the situation at the eastern portal, where the capable engineer in charge, A. W. Locke, was correspondent for the Republican, I went over the top by stage to North Adams. There followed conferences with the chief engineer, Benjamin D. Frost, Mr. Bond, the treasurer, Judge Robinson and many others familiar with the glamor, the disappointments, and the hard facts of the big undertaking. Already the mining-camp flavor which North Adams had acquired was known to me. Professor Mowbray had taken me over his primitive nitro-glycerin works that a day later exploded like a bomb and scattered the fragments of a few workmen with wide suggestiveness. I knew the character of the rock and sliding

mud at the western portal that required the support of masonry.

But the core of the story, the originality and picturesqueness of it, to my mind, lay on the top of the mountain where the central shaft had been sunk. This idea became what newspaper workers call a "hunch." Having a plethora of facts and figures furnished by the headquarters office, I sought to learn how the lines down the shaft had been perfected and who had done the work. Mr. Frost's invariable reply had been "The office did that", until the response palled. It began to seem like a more or less conscious failure to allot credit to subordinates. When, finally, the urbane chief engineer proposed to supervise my visit to the central shaft, I resolved to pilot myself. Going back to the Wilson House, I wrote a letter thanking Mr. Frost for his attention, -and never saw him again.

Alone, on a clear morning filled with autumnal sparkle, I drove up the mountain. All was quiet on the little area in the town of Florida where the office of the central shaft stood. The miners had gone below. Tying the horse, I advanced to encounter crisp challenge from a stalwart figure filling the doorway. I told this man in oilskins why I had come unchaperoned and without a pass from headquarters. There was no lack of understanding on his part, and so began a friendship with Carl O. Wederkinch that lasted while he lived. He clothed me in oilskins, and we entered the bowels of the earth, and that night in North Adams I pumped him until the small hours.

Thus we come to the large figure of the mountain