1869 October18 - California Pacific Railroad schedule

Col. Dewitt Clinton Haskin (circa 1824 – July 17, 1900) was an American

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

who developed the initial methods for construction of the first

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

s under the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

between

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

and

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. In the late 1860s, Haskin gained experience in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

on the construction of the

California Pacific Railroad The California Pacific Railroad Company (abbreviated Cal. P. R. R. or Cal-P) was incorporated in 1865 at San Francisco, California as the California Pacific ''Rail Road'' Company. It was renamed the California Pacific Railroad ''Extension'' Compan ...

. For the

Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) is a rapid transit system in the northeastern New Jersey cities of Newark, Harrison, Jersey City, and Hoboken, as well as Lower and Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is operated as a wholly owned subsid ...

project, he founded the Hudson Tunnel Company in 1873, and began construction in 1874 by digging a shaft in

Jersey City, New Jersey Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark. He had patented a

compressed air Compressed air is air kept under a pressure that is greater than atmospheric pressure. Compressed air is an important medium for transfer of energy in industrial processes, and is used for power tools such as air hammers, drills, wrenches, and o ...

method for reducing cave-ins, but in 1880, 20 workers were killed in a blowout. Another blowout in 1881 and a gradual loss of funding halted the project in 1887. After a British firm worked on the project from 1889-1891, the lawyer

William Gibbs McAdoo William Gibbs McAdoo Jr.McAdoo is variously differentiated from family members of the same name: * Dr. William Gibbs McAdoo (1820–1894) – sometimes called "I" or "Senior" * William Gibbs McAdoo (1863–1941) – sometimes called "II" or "Ju ...

completed the project in 1908. (''See''

Uptown Hudson Tubes The Uptown Hudson Tubes are a pair of tunnels that carry PATH trains between Manhattan, New York City, to the east and Jersey City, New Jersey, to the west. The tubes originate at a junction of two PATH lines on the New Jersey shore and cross ...

References

* Brennan, Joseph (2004-2005)
"Restarting the Hudson Tunnel from Jersey City."
''Alfred Beach’s Pneumatic Subway and the beginnings of rapid transit in New York.''

External links

* ''Engineering News-Record.'' (1908)
"Hudson River Rail Tunnel Plagued by Delays."
1824 births 1900 deaths American engineers {{engineering-stub