The Great Bore
and the coming of the rairoad
In the later years of the 18th century Laommi Baldwin, a noted engineer and politician, advanced the idea of building a canal running the length of Massachusetts taking advantage of the Millers and Deerfield Rivers. He suggested boring through Hoosac Mountain at a cost of $1 million. Surveys were made and plans suggested but the railroad era dawned before a decision was made rendering the canal idea obsolete. By 1847 Rowe citizens began to talk about a railroad up the Deerfield Valley through Zoar, but it would be many years coming.
The railroad from Fitchburg to Greenfield (the Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad) began service in Aril 1849. The Troy and Greenfield Railroad Company was granted a charter in 1889 to build a railroad from Greenfield on the Connecticut River, up the Deerfield Valley, to and through the Hoosac Mountain to North Adams and from there along the Hoosac River to the Vermont state line on the way to Troy.
The first train ran from North Adams to Troy in 1856 but the section from Greenfield to the Hoosac Tunnel wasn’t completed until 1868. Passengers disembarking a the Hoosac Tunnel station were taken by stagecoach up the old Turnpike Road to the North Adams station until the tunnel was finished in 1875.
Rowe and neighboring hill towns had been asked to contribute to the expense of construction of the railroad but declined, as did other towns along the way. But the coming of the railroad brought Rowe out of isolation and impacted its way of life. The Zoar station, which was a scant four miles from the Rowe post office, was really a port of entry and departure for Rowe citizens even though it was in the township of Charlemont. For years Zoar supported a station, freight house, and telegrapher/station agent. All now gone. All buildings were removed, and Zoar remained only a flag stop until the suspension of passenger service in 1958.
The stage coach heading over the Turnpike Road from North Adams to Hoosac Tunnel station.
Hoosac Tunnel Station, located a half mile from the Eastern Portal on the left bank of the Deerfield River, was within the borders of Rowe but was used only by people in the Peck/Cressy neighborhood in western Rowe, who would come down the steep mountain on the old Tunnel Road to reach the station. Otherwise, the station was used by people living across the river in the town of Florida. The station also served as the embarkation point for the Hoosac Tunnel & Wilmington Railroad (HT&W) seen in the photo above behind the station.
Of course, the section of the railroad from Zoar Gap past the Hoosac Tunnel Station to the river crossing was in Rowe. When the railroad decided to use electric engines through the tunnel (1911–1946) the switching yard was in Rowe. This railroad eventually became the Boston & Maine.
An Engineering Marvel
In the 1860s and 1870s the railroad tunnel being dug under Hoosac Mountain in Florida and North Adams was referred to as the “Great Bore.” The 4¾ mile Hoosac Tunnel was an engineering marvel and would remain the longest tunnel in North America until 1916. Although the tunnel did not pass through Rowe, the east entrance was just across the river from Rowe’s Neck, the stretch of Rowe land around which the big bend of the Deerfield Rover flows.
On January 8, 1851, the Troy and Greenfield Railroad directors broke ground for their tunnel at the west (North Adams) end. However, work did not start until 1852 when a huge boring machine (seen in the illustration below) was brought to the east end. After a few days and only a few feet into the mountain, the machine stopped and would go no farther. That bore can still be seen to the left of the east tunnel entrance. Thus discouraged, the company stopped work until 1854.
At that time the Commonwealth of Massachusetts stepped in, advanced $2 million to the Troy and Greenfield Railroad, and as security for the loan, took a mortgage on the railroad property. The contract was given to Herman Haupt & Company. Work progressed slowly until 1862 when Haupt quit and the mortgage was foreclosed.
After much controversy the state took over the project in 1863 and hired Thomas Doane as chief engineer. Again, progress was slow and government officials were upset with the cost of the Great Bore and its difficulties. On December 24, 1868 a contract was let to Walter and Francis Stanley for $4,594,268 to finish the job by 1874. From that time on the project made continuous progress but still attracted a great deal of controversy until the borings from the east and west met on November 27, 1873.
Drilling through the mountain was done manually with black powder until the 1865 introduction of the Burleigh drill using compressed air. A rock crib dam was constructed on the Deerfield River a short distance above the Great Bend creating a 16-foot head of water and a 30-foot fall to generate hydro power. The power supplied compressed air for the drills used in boring. When nitroglycerine was introduced, the blasting took on a new dimension and progress continued at a better pace. Eight- to nine-hundred men were employed in tunnel construction—most of them Cornish miners. Additional workers came from Germany, Denmark, Ireland and French Canada. Some Rowe men must have found work there, but statistics are lost to history.
Although the Hoosac Tunnel was plagued with problems from working through a fault zone to great water flows, the engineering is still recognized by the Society of Civil Engineers as an achievement of national significance. And in this great drama of the nineteenth century, Rowe played a part.
Of special relevance to Rowe’s history was the final engineering of the tunnel. One of the eight stone lining towers was located on Rowe’s Head, the mountain just across from the tunnel’s east entrance. Two other lining towers were on the peaks of Hoosac Mountain—Whitcomb in Florida and Spruce Hill in North Adams; one tower at each entrance to the tunnel; one each on Rowe’s Head and Notch Mountain in North Adams; and one each at the central shaft in Florida and the western shaft in North Adams.
In 1866 and for the next two years, the engineers sighted by their lining towers, from the west portal to Notch Mountain, to Spruce Hill to Whitcomb Mountain to Rowe’s Neck and back to the east portal. Inside the tunnel, the sighting was carried forward with plumb bobs driven into the roof. Engineers would sight down these to a lamp further along until a straight line was achieved, performing a survey so exact that when the east tunnel broke through to the west, they were only 5/16" and 9/16" off-center. Traces of a road can still be seen on the side of the hill near Doubleday’s Cliffs, and over the mountain the bolts stick out of the rock where the lining pole stood. Finally, on the riverbank, the stone side piers of the old dam still remain.
The Great Bore had great significance in engineering, the emergence of hard-rock drilling technology, the successful first use of nitroglycerine and electrical ignition, and the birth of the American compressed-air industry.
Text from The History of Rowe Massachusetts, by Percy Whiting Brown and Nancy Newton Williams.
The Rowe Historical Society extends its gratitude to the North Adams Public Library, North Adams, MA, for permission to use images of the tunnel construction from their collection.
Still want to learn more? Read stories about the tunnel here: Hoosac Tunnel Then and Now
Hoosac Tunnel Facts
The Hoosac tunnel builders were successful in blasting with nitroglycerine, an explosive ten times more powerful than the black powder used previously. They established procedures for simultaneous detonation using an electric battery, a concept that had not previously been tried.
Engineers devised an innovative 1,000-foot elevator to hoist rock from the central access shaft.
Engineers experimented with steam-powered mechanical drills before successfully adopting the newly invented compressed-air Burleigh drill, which greatly improved the rate at which the tunneling progressed.
More than a half million pounds of nitroglycerine were used. Over 20 million bricks were used as lining to support the tunnel. Nearly 200 lives were lost during the two decades of hazardous construction. One million tons of rock were removed to create the tunnel.
Hoosac Tunnel Facts are used with permission from the American Society of Civil Engineers