Restoration Obscura Photo Feature: Return to the Bloody Pit
Eastern Portal, Hoosac Tunnel
42.6937° N, 72.9994° W
Last week I returned to the Eastern Portal of the Hoosac Tunnel with antique cameras and a plan to map the forgotten ruins that still line the slope above the grade. The bare trees and gray skies of November fit the reputation perfectly. Scattered through the woods are the foundations of compressor housings and the stone footings of the old alignment towers, built to keep the tunnel’s twin headings perfectly true as engineers bored from both sides of the mountain. These remnants frame the eastern approach to one of the most ambitious engineering projects of the nineteenth century.
To the left of the main portal lies the 1853 test bore, an early attempt to cut into Hoosac Mountain using a newly designed steam-driven rock drill. The experiment advanced only about ten feet before the machine shattered against the rock and seized. The shallow recess that remains, mostly buried in loose stone and runoff, marks the site of that first setback in a long and punishing effort to push a railroad through solid mountain.
Construction of the Hoosac Tunnel continued through two decades of political scandal, contractor disputes, and technological change. Workers blasted and drilled their way through nearly five miles of rock, facing deadly gases, flooding, and frequent explosions. The 1870 collapse of the central shaft and the earlier 1867 shaft fire, when thirteen men were trapped and suffocated underground, cemented its grim reputation. In all, more than 190 men died driving the railroad through the mountain. Newspapers began calling it The Bloody Pit, a name that stuck as stories spread of ghostly lights and phantom voices deep within the bore.
Today, the eastern portal exhales a steady draft of cold air from the depths. Beside it, the remains of that 1853 test bore sit half hidden in the slope, a scar of ambition, invention, and loss at the mouth of one of America’s most haunted works of engineering.
You can explore more about the Hoosac Tunnel on Restoration Obscura, and hear the full story in The Bloody Pit, an episode of the Restoration Obscura Field Guide Podcast, available wherever you listen.
More at www.restorationobscura.com
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