This photo caught my attention, as I’d forgotten that the four-lane Pennsylvania Turnpike had two-lane tunnels for some time before the second bores were made. This is a shot of the traffic warden at Kittatinny Mountain, one of the original seven tunnels. A Dodge truck carrier is hauling a load of Chrysler product cars, and the convertible going the other direction looks like it might have just come off that truck.
I seem to remember one or more of these on our fateful trip to New York in 1964 in our Fairlane. And I have a perfectly vivid mental image of a ’63 or ’64 Buick Riviera passing us with considerable speed once the road widened to four lanes. Why couldn’t we have been riding in one? Never mind; it’s not like it was much roomier than the Fairlane, but it sure was a hell of a lot more stylish, and faster too.
This tunnel is very close to my hometown, which is located about seven miles from the Blue Mountain Interchange. Whenever we returned from a visit to our relatives in Cleveland, Ohio, I knew that we were close to home when we hit the tunnels.
The second tunnels were added in 1966-67. Farther west, the Laurel Hill Tunnel was abandoned in 1964, and the Rays Hill Tunnel and Sideling Hill Tunnel were abandoned in 1968, as part of a massive re-routing project. It was determined that re-routing the Turnpike would be cheaper than boring a second tunnel for each of those three.
Urban explorers have made some great photos and videos of those abandoned tunnels. When I was living in Pittsburgh, I always considered visiting one, but it seemed too daunting to actually get there on a bike or on foot.
https://uncoveringpa.com/abandoned-pa-turnpike
My wife has visited the Rays Hill Tunnel. She managed to get there on foot.
It’s actually a very cool bike ride to the tunnels. I’ve done it numerous times. Just make sure you bring lights because (especially in the longer Sideling Hill Tunnel) it’s so dark it’s like riding into your grave, and a jacket because whatever the temperature is outside it’s ridiculously cold in the tunnels. The whole accessible part of the abandoned Turnpike is 14 miles out and back.
As for the Laurel Hill Tunnel, it’s being used by Chip Ganassi as a rolling wind tunnel. Really.
We were stuck in a terrible snowstorm & traffic jam approaching Breezewood from the west around Christmas 1969. The bypass of Sideling Hill and Rays Hill was closed: the turnpike snow removal squad was not prepared for the greater quantity of snow at the higher altitude of the new highway. All traffic had to exit at Breezewood. We pressed on, on the also fairly new I-70 southward toward Hancock, MD. That was a scary trip, could’ve gone off the road any time but somehow by luck we made our destination.
I still remember two songs on the radio, must’ve been a DJ out of Phila or Pittsburgh playing them frequently, heard them what seemed like many times as we crawled along. Diana Ross & the Supremes, “Someday We’ll Be Together”, and, Shocking Blue, “Venus”
What is your hometown, Geeber? My family’s farm was just north of Newburg, on the north side of the Turnpike, at the corner of Enola and Mountain Roads. Mountain becomes Swartz road as you climb into the foothills of Blue Mountain.
It’s a small world! I grew up in Shippensburg, which straddles the Cumberland and Franklin county lines.
I’m quite familiar with Newburg. Several of my high school classmates lived in the town of Newburg, or its immediate outskirts.
One of my paternal great-grandmothers was originally a Swartz. Her brother (Roy Swartz) owned a farm in that area, and several of his descendants still live in the Newburg-Lurgan-Mongul area.
Went to work for United Telephone Co of PA. after graduating from Chambersburg. Used to shoot trouble on the phones at the tunnel ends above the roadway. The huge exhaust fans were nearby and the exhaust fumes were unbearable. We covered Newburg etc. When they were pushing thru Blue Mountain for the new lanes, we ran the cable to the contractor out of Baltimore that got the contract. My co-worker grew up near the Sidling Hill tunnel
If we working near Knobsville we would sometimes drive up to the abandon tunnel and walk in.
I worked at Sprint/United Telephone from 1989 through 1996 out of the Carlisle headquarters (located on Walnut Bottom Road).
I worked at service center on York Rd. from when it opened, maybe 1987 to about 1990. Transferred back to Cburg to cable splicing. Early retirement in Jan 2002. Been in Arizona since. Sure would like to email directly without publishing for everybody to see.
Bob, you can e-mail me at gbeckenbaugh@aol.com if you wish. I still keep in touch with some of my former Sprint/United co-workers.
Indeed it is. I live in Carlisle, grew up in Boiling Springs, and eventually graduated from Shippensburg University. Who knew there would be so many of us in the sticks? It’s not like we’re on the opposite sides of a big city, it’s the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. Though I guess Carlisle is on the map for the Barracks and the car shows.
Youtuber Post10 has done a bunch of vids where he explores those tunnels.
As a NE Ohioan, I first traversed parts of PT in the late 1950s, and it seemed pretty cool (then tunnels especially). Ohio had just opened its own turnpike and was among the states that learned a lot from PA’s example, even if there were no tunnels to bore.
I see there’s a ton of old postcards and such online, but this also turned up–the gateway to hundreds of engineering drawings and other such records: https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/psa/islandora/object/psa%3Atcecppd
Uh-oh, this could be today’s rabbit hole if I don’t restrain myself! (I took just enough drafting training as a teen to really, really admire these drawings.)
Very neat.
The Chief Tunnel Engineer listed there was Richard M. Merriman, who was from a family of notable civil engineers of the time. Prior to joining the PA Turnpike, he had served as a supervisor for the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
His father was Mansfield “Pop” Merriman, who was one of the nation’s leading civil engineering authorities in the late 1800s/early 1900s (and a professor at Lehigh University, so the family had a strong Pennsylvania connection). His sons followed him into the field. Richard’s brother Thaddeus Merriman worked for many years as the chief engineer for New York City’s Water Supply Board.
As a child traveling between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg to visit my paternal grandparents, I vividly remember these, and the traffic jams they caused.
They were also dimly lit and kind of terrifying.
Of the 7 original tunnels which were bore-outs of RR tunnels started by Cornelius Vanderbilt’s ill-fated South Penn RR, 4 were double-bored and three – Sidelining Hill, Ray’s Hill, and Laurel Mountain – were bypassed. Bobby Rahal Racing currently uses the old Laurel Hill tunnel as a wind tunnel, while the others, and their abandoned right of way have popped up in apocalyptic movies
Even though I’m from Pittsburgh and was born in the early 50s, the first time I was on the PA Turnpike was in the summer of 1967, and that was going westbound into Ohio. My family regarded the turnpike as very dangerous, so we used other routes, primarily US Routes 22 or 30, to travel eastward.
By the time I drove eastbound toward Philadelphia (and college), it was 1970, and the 3 tunnels you mention had already been bypassed. A college friend pointed out the abandoned roadway that included the Ray’s Hill and Sideling Hill Tunnels. They’re still crumbling away to this day but no longer so easily seen from the current alignment.
It’s actually quite easy to drive right up to the westbound entrance of the Laurel Hill Tunnel, although the pavement is badly deteriorated and most of the former westbound lanes have been torn up. There are no barriers to entry — you just need to know where to look — and the tunnel is only about 3/4 mile off the highway.
Here’s a couple of photos from October 2018 showing the portal (left) and the old pavement just east of the portal, complete with 4 lanes and narrow median.
The convertible is a ’49. The top cars on the truck are DeSotos, and the one visible below is a Chrysler. I think they’re ’51 or ’52, not ’50. Oddly, the other car in the picture also seems to be a convertible, maybe a ’40.
PA, with its constant coal-flavored rain, wasn’t convertible country! Maybe the convertibles were from elsewhere.
My dad had that same Dodge tractor. I believe it was a 1951. It’s visible in the background of this pic.
You have my sincere sympathy regarding your father’s choice of car, Paul. It seems very unfair when parents won’t take the expert advice of their offspring regarding such matters.
It’s ironic that now that I’m an adult (allegedly), there really aren’t any cars that I yearn to own in the way that there were when I was younger.
Great photo.
What is that Volkswagen-like (but not) car exiting at the left? It appears to have two door hardtop type roof styling on some prewar body. Kind of like some mid fifties European or British car. But it’s not the mid fifties yet.
Not enough resolution (I expanded it way up) to see if it has convertible roof bows, but it probably actually is one. One thing is clear – the rear track is really narrow.
Looks like a ’39 Mercury “sedan-coupe” to me with their unique roofline
This looks like an optical illusion from the traffic wardens lookout. The two tractor trailers passing each other look like they cant even fit inside. Although the drivers could probably high five each other out of camaraderie. The longest tunnel I’ve driven through is the Buffalo Bill Dam Tunnel aka, the Shoshone Canyon Tunnel at 2.8 miles/ 4506 meters just outside Cody WY, on the way to Yellowstone Park. That particular road to Yellowstone is so beautiful that I don’t bypass the tunnel. By the time I start getting claustrophobic the light at the end of the tunnel starts to appear.
In the video the motorcyclist is traveling Eastward from the town of Wapiti, stops for a bit at the Buffalo Bill Dam and continues to Cody WY. If you can’t wait the action starts at 1:30.
I was stationed at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1965 and remember the traffic jams driving home to Pittsburgh in my near new 1964 Chevy Impala SS. I believe they only had one 4 lane tunnel at the time. The rest of them were 2 lane, dark and smokey
This road must have been a big deal because I can remember “Pennsylvania Turnpike” brand car tires.
Youtuber Post10 has a bunch of vids where he explores this tunnel.
If that photo would be 15 years later, I would have thought it was my father. I remember him wearing that uniform. We thought it was neat when he would take us in the control room (which wasn’t often) to watch the cars entering and exiting the tunnels. He told stories of a rig wrecking on the sharp turn and live turkeys were everywhere.; the refrigeration went out on another one and the employees were given lots of seafood; a woman froze and couldn’t drive thru the tunnels so the employees did ( Didn’t hear what happened when she got to the next tunnel)
I grew up in Easton, and my parents and I drove through that tunnel a number of times in mid to late 1950s. It would most likely have been to visit my paternal uncle and his family in Pittsburgh.
Fascinating history, I followed the links quite a while .
-Nate
My mom was from Central city and I remember going to see my grand parents out there via the turn pike
I worked there for a few years. Always appreciated the history of the tunnels
I recall several years ago, flying from Philadelphia to San Francisco. While sitting in a window seat on the right side of the aircraft (Facing North), I could see the PA Turnpike starting just West of the Susquehanna River in the distance. As we progressed Westward, the Blue Ridge Mountains were in view, I estimate that we were aloft at around 20,000 feet, the intersection of the Turnpike and the Blue Mountain Tunnel were about to meet . I could then see the 700 foot gap between the Blue Mountain and Kittatinny Tunnels . Beside the elevation, the plane’s track was about 4 miles away to the South. Despite the altitude and distance, I could see an 18 wheeler traveling through the gap and little did the driver know that he was being spotted at such a unique vantage point.
1950?
My Dad was in the National Guard at Ft. Indiantown Gap (other side from Harrisburg from this) that summer…he remembers laying on the hood of a truck with a bunch of other guys, listening to a radio and hearing about developments in Korea…one of the old timers told them that they would soon be federalized and end up going to Korea which is almost what happened.
Except….in the fall of 1950, Dad went on to Camp Atterbury in Indiana ahead of his regiment to make preparations, and there was a terrible train accident in Ohio where the troop train carrying his regiment en route from Pennsylvania was hit by another train…they’d pulled over due to mechanical issues and the other train didn’t realize they were there…some reenlisted who survived WWII were killed in this accident. My Dad went back to Ohio to accompany the bodies back to NEPA (where he’s from). Not sure if it was because of the accident, but instead of going to Korea, he ended up going to Germany which was safer duty at that time. Because he was in the Army he got to go to college on the GI bill (first in his family) and became a chemist…first job out of school in 1956 he started working on semiconductors, which he did until he retired in 1990. He would likely have followed the normal working path and ended up in the coal mines otherwise, dying young from inevitable black lung at an early age (as my Grandfather did).
So..in a round about way, the train wreck turned out well for my Dad in the long run (despite the tragedy for those in the carnage).