The Paw Paw Tunnel is a

canal tunnel {{Refimprove, date=September 2009 A canal tunnel is a tunnel for a canal. The building of a canal tunnel is crucial to help a waterway that is normally used for shipping cross a difficult section of terrain. They are also constructed to reduce th ...

on the

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, abbreviated as the C&O Canal and occasionally called the "Grand Old Ditch," operated from 1831 until 1924 along the Potomac River between Washington, D.C. and Cumberland, Maryland. It replaced the Potomac Canal, ...

(C&O) in Allegany County, Maryland. Located near

Paw Paw, West Virginia Paw Paw is a town in Morgan County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 410 at the 2020 census. The town is known for the nearby Paw Paw Tunnel. Paw Paw was incorporated by the Circuit Court of Morgan County on April 8, 1891, an ...

, it was built to bypass the Paw Paw Bends, a stretch of the

Potomac River The Potomac River () drains the Mid-Atlantic United States, flowing from the Potomac Highlands into Chesapeake Bay. It is long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map. Retrieved Augus ...

containing five horseshoe-shaped bends. The town, the bends, and the tunnel take their name from the pawpaw trees that grow prolifically along nearby ridges. Built using more than six million bricks, the tunnel has been described as "the greatest engineering marvel along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park." Located at milepost 155.2, the tunnel served to eliminate six miles of canal and is credited with contributing to the economic success of nearby Cumberland, Maryland. Construction on the tunnel began in 1836 and was expected to be completed within two years at a total cost of $33,500. But the project proved far more complicated and costly than expected, and the tunnel did not open until 1850, more than a decade behind schedule. The project was delayed for many reasons. Not only did the construction company underestimate the difficulty of the work, violence frequently broke out among immigrant laborers of different ethnicities, and wages often went unpaid due to the company's financial problems. By the time the tunnel was finally completed at a price of $600,000, it had nearly bankrupted the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. Due to the high cost and long delay in completing the tunnel, the construction ended at

Cumberland, Maryland Cumberland is a U.S. city in and the county seat of Allegany County, Maryland. It is the primary city of the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 19,076. Located on the Potomac River, ...

, falling short of the original plan to take it all the way to

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

. The tunnel was used by canal boats until the C&O closed in 1924. The tunnel and towpath are now maintained for public use as part of the

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park is located in the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland. The park was established in 1961 as a National Monument by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to preserve the neglected remains o ...

. Though never one of the longest tunnels in the world, Paw Paw Tunnel remains one of the greatest engineering feats of its day.

History

left, 200px, Aerial view of Paw Paw area. Tunnel is marked on photo. Note the cliffs on the Maryland (left) side of the river, which presented difficulties for the Canal planners At Paw Paw, the canal engineers had a quandary with no easy solutions: follow the river (with its cliffs which would have required crossing over to West Virginia (then part of Virginia), damming the river to make a slackwater, and hacking out from the cliffs on the Maryland side) or make a tunnel. The newly appointed engineer, Charles B. Fisk, managed to convince the board of directors of a tunnel's superiority. The tunnel plan was approved in February 1836, with an expected completion date of July 1838. p. 198 Lee Montgomery, a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

minister who had experience from building the canal tunnel for the

Union Canal Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

Hahn, p. 200 was awarded the contract on March 15, 1836. Construction on the tunnel began in 1836. Unfortunately for Montgomery, the

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

workers were not skilled at tunnel work, so he obtained English masons, English and Welsh miners, and some "Dutch" .e. Germanlabourers. More unfortunately, this caused ethnic tensions which exploded into violence in 1837 and 1838, specifically between the Irish and everyone else; rioters destroyed the tavern at Oldtown, burned shanties, and the like.Hahn, p. 199 There were more riots in 1839 at Little Orleans. Montgomery succeeded in boring the tunnel through on June 5, 1840, at a point from the south portal, but did not finish it. Due to construction and financial problems, no work was done from 1841 to 1847. In 1848, a subcontract was let to McCulloch and Day to finish the tunnel. The tunnel was opened for traffic (and essentially completed) in 1850, but the brick liner was not finished until after the tunnel was opened. The construction costs were $616,478.65, much more than had originally been budgeted. In 1872, a semaphore signal was installed at the west end of the tunnel to control traffic.

Boatmen and the tunnel

Boatmen could usually tell if another boat was in the tunnel because the water level would be down about . The loaded boat going downstream had the right of way, but that was not often honored, and there were occasional fistfights between rival boatmen over the right of way. The tunnel was so narrow that nobody could pass between the mules and the side of the tunnel. There are records of passengers playing music (to hear the echo) or singing in the tunnel to keep up their courage.

The tunnel today

Today the Paw Paw Tunnel can be easily explored with a flashlight, as the towpath is still intact. Trekkers can return via the tunnel, or hike back over the Tunnel Hill Trail. This passes interpretive markers about the German and Irish workers who lived along the path during the tunnel's construction. A

rockslide A rockslide is a type of landslide caused by rock failure in which part of the bedding plane of failure passes through compacted rock and material collapses ''en masse'' and not in individual blocks. Note that a rockslide is similar to an avalanc ...

in January 2013 closed the trail east of the tunnel for four months, so the tunnel could not be reached from the east side. It reopened on April 17, 2013. A visitor on 26-Nov-2021 found the east end closed again. The NPS started a two-phase construction project to fix the scaling of rock on the downstream tunnel approach in 2017. The first phase, which addressed the most urgent sections of the deteriorating rock slope, has been completed. The second phase will begin the first week of May 2019 and will address additional hazards downstream of the newly completed section. The cost is listed as $750,000.

Gallery

Paw Paw Tunnel - HDR (21296984493).jpg, Downstream (north) side of tunnel Paw Paw tunnel downstream (north) end in 2022.jpg, Looking out from north side of tunnel Inside the Paw Paw Tunnel.jpg, Looking north through the Paw Paw Tunnel Paw Paw tunnel survey marker on Towpath side of tunnel (unpainted).jpg, NPS Survey marker on the wall (towpath side) of the tunnel Hole in brick lining in Paw Paw tunnel.jpg, Hole or space in brick lining. There are many of these. Large hole in brick lining and survey marker in Paw Paw Tunnel.jpg, This large hole gives an idea how thick the brick lining is. Note survey marker. Paw Paw tunnel survey marker on Towpath side of tunnel (painted yellow).jpg, Another survey marker, painted yellow Candocanal.jpg, Another view of the upstream side of the tunnel

References

External links