The Wadesville Tunnel

The Wadesville Tunnel was originally part the Danville & Pottsville Railroad - D&P - constructed between 1831 and 1837 (in Schuylkill County Pennsylvania). This was likely the second railroad tunnel to be built (December 1833) in the United States following the Staple Bend Tunnel on the Allegheny Portage Railroad several months earlier in June 1833. There is so little information available to provide a history perhaps because the Tunnel was not used after 1837 like the entirety of the eastern segment of the D&P. 

The D&P was constructed between 1831 and 1837. The D&P began its history in the 1820s when a group of prominent Pennsylvania businessmen joined together to receive a charter from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1826 to build a railroad to connect the Schuylkill River (at Pottsville) with the Susquehanna River (at Danville).  To design and oversee construction the investors hired Moncure Robinson, the prominent civil engineer.  He had previously been employed by among others, the Allegheny Portage Railroad.

Work began on the eastern segment of the D&P on April 9, 1831. The tunnel cutting actually began on December 12, 1831. The Tunnel was to connect the recently opened (on April 19, 1831) Mount Carbon Railroad at the Tunnel's southern (eastern) end, proceed under Mine Hill into the Mill Creek Valley. Utilizing six incline planes the D&P was to ascend and then descend the Broad Mountain range into the Little Mahanoy Valley to Girardville.  The Girardville connection was important as it would have opened up coalfields (in the mostly undeveloped Second or Middle Coal Field) and timberlands (many owned by one of the D&P’s investors, Stephen Girard).  

The Wadesville Tunnel was located in what was then Norwegian Township (today – New Castle Township).  The Tunnel was approximately 800 feet long and was arched with brick and stone masonry at both ends.  By the time construction began, some St. Clair residents had erected temporary structures in which to initially shelter and board workmen for the Tunnel. Mine Hill was north of but not connected to St. Clair at that time. The opening of the Tunnel (south) connected to the first incline plane.   It was 105 feet high, had a length of 667 feet with an angle of 9 degrees.  This was the second railroad tunnel built in the United States following the Staple Bend Tunnel (also designed initially by Moncure Robinson), which opened in June, 1833.  The contractor that performed the tunneling was Milnes and Company. By the end of January 1832 there were over 300 workers constructing the tunnel and tunneling progress was at 500 feet in August.

Plan and profile of the D&P showing the Wadesville Tunnel - Detailed map of part of Pennsylvania between Sharp Mountain and the Susquehanna River depicting roads, drainage, and relief by hachures along the survey route. Shows the east and west branches of the Mount Carbon Railroad and the Mill Creek Railroad, which began operation in 1829. Chartered on April 8, 1826. Contributor Names - Kennedy, David K., Mapmaker, active 1830-1839, Lucas, William B., Danville and Pottsville Rail Road Company, Philadelphia, 1831.

 

The entirety of the eastern portion of the D&P opened on September 24, 1834.  By 1835 about twenty-five to thirty cars of coal per day ran down the plane from Broad Mountain into the tunnel.  However, the tunnel (and operation) was abandoned after 1837 as it was quite expensive to and not cost efficient to operate.  Mining engineers for the D&P had failed to uncover any suitable anthracite coal deposits (primarily due to the lack of development money available after the Panic of 1837).  The only coal transport revenue came from the mine of Thomas Ridgeway who drilled a coal slope near the west (north) end of the tunnel.

The tunnel itself was built from both ends and met in the middle on December 17, 1833. This was possibly the first tunnel in the world to be thusly constructed.  This method is now used on almost all tunnel projects today. The final cost of the Tunnel was $22,000 (or $737,845, in 2021 dollars).  

After 1837 and with no coal revenue easily available, the eastern portion of the D&P – the Tunnel, the inclines and the track were essentially abandoned.  As early as 1844, Rupp's History of Schuylkill County reported the road's east segment "rotting in the sun”. Later in 1861 the Mahanoy and Broad Mountain Railroad was to connect Mahanoy or Butler townships in Schuylkill County, with the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, or any of its lateral railroads.  A connection was made to St. Clair without the requirement of a tunnel.  This essentially duplicated the purpose of the original D&P.

Ash, S.A. and Kynor, H.D., Barrier Pillars in the Southern Field, Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania, Department of Interior, Bureau of Mines, Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1953

The Mount Carbon Railroad Coal traffic through stripping operation (surface mining) caused the east branch (Wadesville branch) to be rebuilt after World War 2. The old D&P tunnel and its Plane 1 above Wadesville was destroyed in this stripping operation.

Bibliography

National Park Service, Staple Bend Tunnell Website

Inkrote, Cindy, Bumpy Start for Danville Pottsville Railroad, The Danville News, January 26, 2009

Danville and Pottsville Historical Marker

Heydinger, Earl, Group V. The Mount Carbon; Danville & Pottsville-Philadelphia & Sunbury; Shamokin Valley & Pottsville Railroads, Bulletin of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, Volume 107, 1962

Pottsville Miner’s Journal, December 17, 1831

Hoffman, John N., Girard Estate Coal lands  In Pennsylvania, 1801-1884, Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington DC, 1972

The History of Schuylkill County, Munsell, New York, 1881

Heydinger, Earl, The Suppression of "Bad News" About the Early Railroads,  Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, No. 119 (October 1968)

Railway World, Quarto Vol. 9, Number 12, March 24, 1883, Philadelphia

Pottsville Republican, October 28, 1952

The Danville & Pottsville Railroad

On April 8, 1826, the Pennsylvania legislature passed an act which incorporated the Danville & Pottsville Railroad (D&P) and also granted it the right to own 1,000 acres of coal lands.  One purpose of the proposed D&P was to open the Shenandoah and Mahanoy valleys (also known as the second, or middle, coalfield), extract the coal from the lands, and then connect to existing transportation infrastructure (the Schuylkill Canal) via a tunnel at Wadesville. The project was the idea of several Pennsylvania businessmen including Stephen Girard of Philadelphia also a banker, Burd Patterson of Pottsville (both with interests in the second coalfield) and Daniel Montgomery Jr. of Danville. Secondarily, the railroad was also to link the Susquehanna and Schuylkill rivers allowing anthracite coal, iron, and timber to be transported in large quantities to established and growing markets along the Susquehanna River as well as the existing transportation infrastructure to Philadelphia via the Schuylkill River.This latter purpose was also an idea shared by Christian Brobst of Cattawissa who was planning a separate route from Catawissa to Port Carbon on the Schuylkill River, later to become the Little Schuylkill & Susquehanna Railroad (LSSR).

Route map for the D&P from 1827, showing tunnels and planes required (by Moncure Robinson)

Moncure Robinson who was employed by the Pennsylvania Canal surveyed both routes. He found merit in each project but was hired by the D&P to implement its project.  The project suffered a setback when both Montgomery and Girard died in 1831. Notwithstanding this, the work began in December 1831.

The construction plan envisioned the railroad being built in sections. Commercially, in the interest of producing immediate revenue, work on the eastern end of the railroad at Wadesville where there was to be a connection with the Mt. Carbon Railroad, which already had extended north to Wadesville, was to begin first.

The tunnel near Wadesville was apparently the second railroad tunnel constructed in America when it opened in 1833. On September 24, 1834, the opening of this eastern section took place with six self acting planes including the 345-foot-high original Mahanoy Plane. Both Robinson and his wife rode over these planes to demonstrate the reliability of the design and construction. However, no coal was being mined until a coal seam was opened on the northern side of Bear Ridge. But by 1837 the original coal seam ran out and another mine tunnel was planned to be extended to what was believed to be the Mammoth Vein.  This became known as the Girard Tunnel.  However, funds to develop the tunnel became scarce (and a subsequent business depression - The Panic of 1837 - occurred) and work was completely stopped. It would not be until 1857 that work on the Girard tunnel resumed and the Mammoth Vein would be discovered more or less where it was believed to have been in 1837.

During 1837, work proceeded on the remaining western section of the road, and on August 15, 1837, this section was opened. The western section extended from the Susquehanna River at Sunbury (not Danville as originally planned) and ended to the Shamokin coalfields, also part of the Second Coal Field. Several years later this line was extended to Mt. Carmel.

The Banking Panic of 1837 created financial difficulties and the project never completed the gap of about 20 miles that would have connected the two ends.  Moreover, the Girard trustees deferred opening up the coal lands in Girardville (the eastern end of the railroad) and that entire portion of the project was abandoned, despite having already been built.  In this regard the D&P was similarly situated as the LSSR (i.e. the original Catawissa Railroad). That railroad also abandoned its partially built line between Catawissa and Tamanend. However, the western portion of the D&P line was able to recover and operated marginally for over a decade. 

The railroad’s precarious finances - including bankruptcies in 1849 and 1857 - prevented profitable operations. On April 12, 1851 the D&P reorganized  as Philadelphia & Sunbury Railroad and then in 1858 as the Shamokin Valley and Pottsville Railroad Company.

Bibliography

Baer, Christopher T., A GENERAL CHRONOLOGY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD COMPANY ITS PREDECESSORS AND SUCCESSORS AND ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT 1831, May 2015 Edition

Baer, Christopher T., A GENERAL CHRONOLOGY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD COMPANY ITS PREDECESSORS AND SUCCESSORS AND ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT 1834, May 2015 Edition

Baer, Christopher T., A GENERAL CHRONOLOGY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD COMPANY ITS PREDECESSORS AND SUCCESSORS AND ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT , 1851, March 2005 Edition

Bell's History of Northumberland Co PA, Local History, Brown Runk & Co., Chicago, 1891

Hard Coal Times, CoalHole.com Bloomsburg, PA., 2005

Heydinger, Earl J., The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, No. 107 (OCTOBER 1962), Railway & Locomotive Historical Society

Heydinger, Earl J., GROUP VIII. Railroads of the Lehigh Valley - Pennsylvania Railroad Groups,   The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin No. 109 (OCTOBER 1963)

Hoffman, John N., Girard Estate Coal Lands In Pennsylvanis 1801-1834, Smithsonian Institution Press:Washington DC (1972)

Pottsville Republican, Pottsville Pennsylvania, Stephen Girard, the Pioneer Anthracite Operator, 07 Oct 1914

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