Black Hand Gorge--Interurban Rail Tunnel

I went to Black Hand Gorge for the canal lock, thinking I might be able to see the black hand itself (not being aware it'd been destroyed something like 185 years earlier). But what really drew me in was this random tunnel we found down the trail.

I mean, look at that thing. And I don't mean Katie's infinity scarf.

It wasn't so much the tunnel itself I found fascinating. That part made sense--you're probably sick of my talking about how where there's one mode of transport there's going to be others. There's only so many efficient travel routes in this great nation of ours, so there's going to be overlap. But the thing of it was...there was no hint of what the heck this tunnel was for.

It's long enough you get this neat light-to-dark, dark-to-light effect--must have been fun on a train

It wasn't really big enough for a rail line, based on other tunnels I'd seen. Also, it was hewn out of the rock itself without any additional prettying or reinforcing--something I also thought odd based on my experience. Looking at this now, there'd be no need to line this tunnel because it's cut directly out of the rock. But at the time, I had the Moonville tunnel in my head. But I couldn't see a need for a tunnel that wasn't rail based--couldn't be a canal tow path, you wouldn't put this much work into a road for horse carts or even automobiles just to cut down the gorge.

Keirns tells the story of a blast in the tunnel while under construction that might tie back to this scrawl

There was also this little bit of trivia. It resonated with me because I'd done some looking on what was up here at the preserve (one does not propose a couple hour round-trip to one's wife without having some good sights set up), but none of my initial pings on Black Hand Gorge said anything about a tunnel through the rock. I know better than to think this, but I started having thoughts of some forgotten mystery I could get to the bottom of. An untold story.

The uniform height and arch reminds me of photos I've seen of cathedrals--very impressive to walk through

It wasn't so much an untold story as an undertold story. Some "tunnel" based searches led to me a Wikipedia page, which cited a book by Aaron J. Keirns titled Black Hand Gorge: A Journey Through Time (put out by Little River Publishing). It looked just about perfect for what I wanted to know and did not disappoint. Chapters on the gorge cover everything from the Native American legends to the canal and rail era to "present" day (the book was published in 1995--hard to believe that was 20 years ago, right?). Historical and author's photos provide some fantastic perspective much like I try to achieve here.

Those round spots in the ceiling? Pretty much the only sign of the blasting that took place.

The tunnel was cut for an interurban rail line--think streetcar, but for travelling between cities. They made travel between towns and cities are practical in the 1890's as cars do today, rather than the rail lines that were more of a hassle. The run between Newark and Granville (and by extension, I'm sure, to Columbus) was very successful, and the goal was to extend out to Zanesville--through the gorge, and through Red Rock. It took two shifts of men using dynamite over three months to carve this tunnel out of the rock, and the evidence of the incredible workmanship still shows today.

Red Rock presented some challenges--it was ALL rock

So mystery solved--no grand conspiracy, just an instance of "We only have so many resources, what do we highlight about the gorge?" This rings especially true when you consider Black Hand Gorge is a nature preserve, not a historical one. Which seems like an oversight to me, in a lot of ways, considering the stories around just this one artifact from a bygone era--in "A Journey Through Time" you can read about how the public used the tunnel after the closure of the interurban line (probably after Ford or GM bought it, but that's a story for a different blog).

For now, just try and picture electric trains shuttling back and forth through here each day, people all along the farmland of eastern Ohio taking trips we now consider routine (how many of us commute from Newark to Columbus, or to Zanesville?) but at the time were a huge deal--as much of a game changer in the Ohio economy as the canal system or railroad had been before it.

Incredible to think this was just solid rock--the amount of activity is staggering to think about

Millersport Canals

So you built canals up and down both sides of the state at ridiculous cost but incredible benefit. Then the fad is over--no one is shipping their products by boat anymore, since they can do it far more efficiently (that is, a lot cheaper) on the railroads that sprang up like so many weeds after the civil war.

Canal providing the buffer between front yards and the road

It also doesn't help that a catastrophic flood essentially wrecked the surprisingly delicate canal system. I mean, it's one thing to keep using that 72" CRT television because you forked over six weeks pay for it in 2003--it's actually kind of insane to fork over another six weeks pay in 2015 to fix it. When you're already losing money, it's not a very difficult decision: do the bare minimum to clear the water way and shut it down for good, or pour millions into repairing locks and dams and aqueducts.

A Clue: if they had decided to repair the Ohio and Erie Canal chances are no one would have put driveways across it.

So they shut them down. Then what? What'd they do? There are a lot of reasons why you can't just leave long tracts of standing water about the country side. Mosquitoes comes first to mind, followed children falling in and drowning. In many places the canals were simply filled in, especially where the canals ran through towns or near spots where someone could use the land.

Canal as we might have seen it 100 years ago--narrow angle

In other places the canal right of ways became rail right of ways. That's pretty evident in my last post, where you had the other end of this canal as part of a rail-to-trail initiative. Pretty frequently, rail lines paralleled or used the canal beds since they'd already done the blasting and digging. It just made sense when you consider that freight and passengers using the railroad would still need to go where the canals had gone.

When the road arrived, it was only natural to follow the canal. The canal already knew where to go

In some places, however, you see the canals left intact. Up in Summit County, there's actually a section of the Ohio and Erie that's maintained as an industrial water supply. There's a big chunk of the old canal corridor up in Northeast Ohio that's being preserved as a National Landmark, actually--the Summit County Engineer has a quick guide to the Scenic Byways if you're ever up that way.

Using water from the canal to feed the stock ponds at the fish hatchery next door

Near Buckeye Lake things are far less grandiose, but still a fantastic preservation of what was. The waterway here appears to feed irrigation canals and streams where it terminates near the Hebron Freshwater Fish Hatchery. Part of the reason they keep the canal around in this spot is to feed that hatchery and the wetlands surrounding it

Another, similar view of the canal as we might have seen it--wider angle

You can see three sets of transport infrastructure from three different eras in this stretch--the modern road, the discontinued rail line, and the canal. It's a neat little Venn diagram of space and time, and if this were a video blog I'd probably do some weird overlay thing to emphasize the passing of time from one mode of transport to the next.

But it's not, and special effects are not my thing. All I can do is provide the information, the current view, and hope the telepathy between writer and reader works.

Ohio Canal Greenway Trail Bridge

Recently I took off down the highway with a vague intention of working toward Buckeye Lake. Or maybe Zanesville, where I distinctly remembered there being some pretty cool bridges. Or maybe even further, see if I could get a historic river crossing at the border with either PA or WV. Like I said, very vague intentions. I felt I would know what I was looking for when I saw it.

Turns out, I did. "Know Thyself," said some foreign dead guy.

Cruising past an exit, I saw a covered bridge at the edge of a farm field. It was right next to a modern bridge, and I thought to myself, "Perfect! I can do a post about the passage of time, and how you can't really see the progress like this anywhere."

No idea why, but I find that metal cap on the concrete fascinating.

As it turns out, the covered bridge was just over 20 years old, built as part of a rail right-of-way-to-trail project. It was still a pretty neat find, since I had to find my way back to it from the next exit. My advanced "It's back that way and I just need to find a road going that way" methods took me along Buckeye Lake and along Canal Road in Millersport--watch this space for a couple posts stemming from that adventure.

In this shot, you can see the canal on the far left, the old right of way in the center, and the field on the right. It's interesting, because you have the reason for transportation on the right--the fields have been here as long as American settlers. The canals came to move the goods grown in those fields. Canals in turn were replaced by the faster and more efficient railroads, which used the already defined and built-up right of ways of the canals in many places.

Railroads were largely replaced by the more flexible trucks, leading to more of this type of thing popping up across streams and rivers across the state. Of course, with private sector tax breaks and bailouts largely replacing infrastructure spending, there's no telling how much longer these bridges will actually be around.

Not all state money is thrown away for private gain, however--clearly the Department of Natural Resources replaced the old rail bridge with something much more hiker friendly, to ensure people can make use of their heritage in a meaningful way.

It's not hard to imagine the bridge that once spanned the gap between these substantial supports. I appreciate the fact the original structure was left in place despite the bridge not needing nearly the strength provided. The effect is two-fold: no wasted resources tearing up the existing stone and putting in new works, and you have a piece of history preserved.

The end result is pretty spiffy. It may not be an 1800's covered bridge but it does have the same simple elegance. The sun playing through the trusses was something to see, and I don't think I was quite able to capture it here as well as I'd hoped--you'll just have to check it out for yourself.

Ohio and Erie Canal Lock 16

Picture it: you're a big time producer of something, maybe pig iron south of Columbus. You know there are plenty of buyers for your iron. Factories and mills in places like Cleveland and Buffalo are just dying to turn iron into expensive things.

There's a minor problem, however...those places are hundreds of miles away. And there's no interstate highway system to send truckloads of iron down. There are hardly roads at all, and even fewer trucks. There also isn't a  railroad, because in the 1820's that little world changer hadn't arrived yet.

So what do you do? Use the rivers, of course. Well, if you're able. Rivers are great, but you still have to get to them, challenging with limited overland options. They also have to have enough water in them to float your barges, but not so much water that your barges crash against the river banks and obstacles. Plus, if you're trying to go up river with a heavy load that might be difficult, expensive, or even impossible if there are falls along the way. Finally, the river you have might not even go within a hundred miles of your customers.

For these (and most likely some other) reasons, canal systems were dug all over the place. You had them in England, in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, in New York. And right here in Ohio, both in the East and the West of the state. I find it interesting that ground was broken on the Ohio and Erie Canal not far from Lock 16 pictured here--in Newark, about as close to Columbus as the canal would ever get on it's way to Portsmouth. This is a difficult thing to comprehend for the modern Ohioan.

Of course, the coming of the railroads largely put the canals out of business because they could move freight so much more quickly than the average 3 mph the canals could attain. Many of the right of ways used by the canals were passed to those rail roads or otherwise developed by private citizens until not much sign of the might canal network remains. However, if you know where to look you can still see reminders of the days when 3 mph in a boat being hauled by a mule was the best way to move 10 tons of freight.

Locks--in case you're not familiar with this somewhat obscure piece of technology--are the system used in canals to move boats through different elevations. A boat needing to move from upriver with a nice high water level would need a safe way to navigate a 5-10 foot drop in elevation, since you can't send a boat loaded with 10 tons of anything up (or even down) a stretch of rapids or mini falls.

The boat moves into the lock--this stone channel pictured below--and a set of gates are opened while another is closed. Moving down stream, the gates (which rested in the cutouts pictured above, where even today you can see where the stone was worn smooth by the opening and closing) are closed after the boat--and the ones at the far end open, allowing the boat and all the trapped water to flow safely on the way. If the boat is moving back upstream, the gates up river are opened--to allow water to flood into the lock, and lift the boat up to the proper height.

Moonville Tunnel, Vinton County OH

The concept of this blog boils down to one thing—how weird it is to compare what’s here now with what was. If we go back just a few hundred years the chances are pretty good wherever you’re reading this post was just part of the unbroken wilderness. The landmarks around you simply didn't exist—no grocery store, no McDonalds, no “weird 7.5-way intersection.”

As civilization slowly moved across the continent people gravitated either to where it would be easy or profitable to set up shop. Sheltered bays on the coast, along rivers, rich timber, or mineral deposits. As anyone who’s played any Sid Meier game knows, there are only so many “perfect” spots to build a settlement. As a result, it doesn’t take long to start settling on the next-best spots, close to the really good ones. Think about how you may live in an affordable part of town, but work in a nicer area.

After a couple hundred years of this cycle, we have giant metro areas where settlement after settlement piggybacked on an initial “perfect” spot. These suburbs grew out of nothing because once upon a time the initial city had jobs—and we stay because the jobs are still somewhere in this metro area. If not, we’d leave—think about the mass flight from Pittsburgh since the decline of US Steel, or Detroit as the Big Three consolidate. 

This brings us to the Moonville Tunnel in Vinton County, Ohio.

First, the area was all forest. Then the American colonists started pushing West in search of a wilder land with more opportunity. Small homesteads were carved out of the forest, fields were planted, trails and roads grew. This was followed by the mills, the government buildings, the places of commerce needed by any decent sized group of people. But it wasn't the most convenient place to settle—far from rivers, lakes, mountains with minerals. The population stayed small, remote, and underdeveloped compared to cities like Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh.

Then iron ore was discovered in the rocks in the area, and the boom was on. Iron furnaces such as the one at Hope, OH were constructed. Men and material flowed in, creating boom towns all over the region. The area’s remoteness was now offset by the profit that could be made, and for nearly 100 years the development reflected it. Since there was no easy, natural route like a river to get the iron out after smelting (the industries fed by iron weren't located anywhere nearby, remember), railways were financed to bridge the many creek beds and tunnel through the many hills.

Then the iron boom tapered off, eventually into nothingness. The trains hadn't been in the area before the boom—the needs of the population wouldn't cover the expenses of fuel and track maintenance. Once the iron furnaces had all closed and Southeast Ohio returned to pockets of small rural communities many of the railways simply stopped service to this remote area. This is how we end up with places like the Moonville Tunnel, named after a town that no longer exists and built to shelter tracks long ago removed for use elsewhere.

Moonville Tunnel is a perfect spot to practice the surreal act of trying to reconcile how things are now with how they must have been.

Several of these poles were on either side of the tunnel, near the old right-of-way. Considering how good of shape they're in (considering), my hunch is they were from the tail end of the rail line's existence, rather than the original telegraph cables.

Playing with the shutter speed to get the best view--this is a long exposure that gives you a bit of a feel for the over all scale.

Erosion will remove all things, over time--but considering this was put up 112 years ago, I think they did a find job setting the foundation of this wall.

Short exposure reveals just how dark the tunnel gets--I mean, it IS a tunnel. It begs the question--was there any lighting? What kind? It's easy to see how the stories of conductors falling off trains and switchmen getting run over without a sign can be started from the depths of such darkness.