Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1877 — Longest Tunnel In the Union. [ARTICLE]

Longest Tunnel In the Union.

Few people know how great an engineering enterprise is going on in Baltimore County. For one thing alone, a tunnel six and four-fifths miles 10ng—36,510 feet—is being built under ground, for over four.fifths the distance through hardgneiss and granite. It will be the longest tunnel in the country, and there will be only two larger in the world—the Mont Cenis, which is eight miles in length, and the St. Gothard, now in progress of com struction, and which is to.be nine and a quarter miles. The fact that the water supply tunnel lies near enough to'the surface to allow of numerous shafts, greatly facilitates its construction. The tunnel is a circle twelve feet in diameter; and extends from the Gunpowder River, about eight miles from the city, to Lake Montebello—the distributing reservoir—near the Hartford turnpike, ebout a mile and a half from this city, the direction being twenty-six degrees west of south. This tunnel will conduct the water from the Gunpowder River to Lake Montebello. Thence a conduit, 4,120 feet long,' known as the Clifton tunnel (from the fact that it passes undci a portion of the Clifton Park), conducts the water to a point Just south of the Hartford road, where it enters six mains, each four feet in diameter, which convey the w ater to the city, • distance of LOOOj. The country along the line of die wqrks ia hilly, and the tunnel varies in depth below the surface from 67 to 358 feet There

are fifteen shafts in the main tunnel, the BendiagW4 feet below the surwtder rains down from the, thqrockt, and pours along the thejß-ift. Gangs of men, each inet’s lamp attached to his hat, wane picking and delving in the flinty bowels of the earth; and the monotonous clung of the hammer upon the drffl ls‘constimflftiewd7iexcqs.when everything is in readiness for firing a mine, when all retire to £ . and thunderous reports' roil tnrongtf tne rockj 1 he xork of lUe tunnel ing is all done by band, it being cheaper than tlie machine-work in a drift of such narrow diameter.—