Hoosac Tunnel, East Portal Compressor Ruins
Restoration Obscura Hoosac Tunnel Ruins Mapping Project
Winter settles over the last surviving arch of the East Portal compressor works, a remnant of the three-story building that once housed the turbines and machinery that fed compressed air into the Hoosac Tunnel. The stone was cut from the same schist the crews pulled from the eastern heading, and it once supported a floor that shook with water power drawn from the Deerfield River. Compressed air and the new Burleigh drills changed the pace of construction in the late 1860s and marked the moment when the project finally began to advance through the mountain.
Today the arch stands quiet in the falling snow. The turbine pit is buried, the sluiceway is hidden in the hillside, and the upper floors have slipped back into the forest. Induction artifacts and scattered infrastructure fragments remain throughout the landscape, small traces of the power systems that once drove work inside the mountain. These ruins are part of the Restoration Obscura Hoosac Tunnel Ruins Mapping Project, an effort to chart the full industrial footprint of the tunnel and the long reach of its past. The Bloody Pit is far more than the eastern and western portals and the central shaft. It is an entire corridor of work sites, alignment towers, and industrial ruins stretching along the Deerfield and up the flanks of the Hoosac Range.
You can find more information about the Hoosac Tunnel on Restoration Obscura or by listening to Episode Three of the Restoration Obscura Field Guide Podcast.
Winter settles over the last surviving arch of the East Portal compressor works, a remnant of the three-story building that once housed the turbines and machinery that fed compressed air into the Hoosac Tunnel. The stone was cut from the same schist the crews pulled from the eastern heading, and it once supported a floor that shook with water power drawn from the Deerfield River. Compressed air and the new Burleigh drills changed the pace of construction in the late 1860s and marked the moment when the project finally began to advance through the mountain.
Today the arch stands quiet in the falling snow. The turbine pit is buried, the sluiceway is hidden in the hillside, and the upper floors have slipped back into the forest. Induction artifacts and scattered infrastructure fragments remain throughout the landscape, small traces of the power systems that once drove work inside the mountain. These ruins are part of the Restoration Obscura Hoosac Tunnel Ruins Mapping Project, an effort to chart the full industrial footprint of the tunnel and the long reach of its past. The Bloody Pit is far more than the eastern and western portals and the central shaft. It is an entire corridor of work sites, alignment towers, and industrial ruins stretching along the Deerfield and up the flanks of the Hoosac Range.
You can find more information about the Hoosac Tunnel on Restoration Obscura or by listening to Episode Three of the Restoration Obscura Field Guide Podcast.
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