The tunnel was opened for traffic (and essentially completed) in 1850, but the brick liner was not finished until after the tunnel was opened. In 1848, a subcontract was let to McCulloch and Day to finish the tunnel. ĭue to construction and financial problems, no work was done from 1841 to 1847. Montgomery succeeded in boring the tunnel through on June 5, 1840, at a point 1,505 feet (459 m) from the south portal, but did not finish it. There were more riots in 1839 at Little Orleans. More unfortunately, this caused ethnic tensions which exploded into violence in 18, specifically between the Irish and everyone else rioters destroyed the tavern at Oldtown, burned shanties, and the like.
Unfortunately for Montgomery, the Irish workers were not skilled at tunnel work, so he obtained English masons, English and Welsh miners, and some "Dutch" labourers. Construction on the tunnel began in 1836. Lee Montgomery, a Methodist minister who had experience from building the canal tunnel for the Union Canal was awarded the contract on March 15, 1836. The tunnel plan was approved in February 1836, with an expected completion date of July 1838. Fisk, managed to convince the board of directors of a tunnel's superiority.
Note the cliffs on the Maryland (left) side of the river, which presented difficulties for the Canal plannersĪt 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. Though never one of the longest tunnels in the world, Paw Paw Tunnel remains one of the greatest engineering feats of its day. The tunnel and towpath are now maintained for public use as part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park. The tunnel was used by canal boats until the C&O closed in 1924. Due to the high cost and long delay in completing the tunnel, the construction ended at Cumberland, Maryland, falling short of the original plan to take it all the way to Pittsburgh. By the time the tunnel was finally completed at a price of $600,000, it had nearly bankrupted the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. 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. The project was delayed for many reasons. 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. Ĭonstruction on the tunnel began in 1836 and was expected to be completed within two years at a total cost of $33,500. The town, the bends, and the tunnel take their name from the pawpaw trees that grow prolifically along nearby ridges.īuilt 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. Located near Paw Paw, West Virginia, it was built to bypass the Paw Paw Bends, a six-mile (9.7 km) stretch of the Potomac River containing five horseshoe-shaped bends. For more information, visit the website for the C&O Canal National Historical Park.The Paw Paw Tunnel is a 3,118-foot-long (950 m) canal tunnel on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O) in Allegany County, Maryland. Bicyclists must dismount and walk their bikes, and trailers are not recommended. Put another way, during the stabilization project, the Paw Paw Tunnel will remain open for visitors to explore from the western end (adjacent to the campground and parking lot), but thru-travelers and those approaching from the east must use the Tunnel Hill Trail, a 1.5 mile marked footpath that is routed up and over the top of the Paw Paw Tunnel with an elevation change of 375 feet. This work is likely to extend into the summer of 2022. During this stabilization project, the National Park Service anticipates that the Paw Paw Tunnel will remain open to visitors from the western portal, but that through-access onto the towpath downstream of the tunnel will be closed until the rock fall hazards are ameliorated and the boardwalk repaired. The C&O Canal National Historical Park announced that it resumed work on Augto stabilize rocky slopes along an approximately 1,000-foot length of the C&O Canal Towapath just downstream from the eastern portal of the Paw Paw Tunnel.
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