Auburn Tunnel was a 19th-century

canal tunnel {{Refimprove, date=September 2009 A canal tunnel is a tunnel for a canal. The building of a canal tunnel is crucial to help a waterway that is normally used for shipping cross a difficult section of terrain. They are also constructed to reduce t ...

built for the

Schuylkill Canal The Schuylkill Canal, or Schuylkill Navigation, was a system of interconnected canals and slack-water pools along the Schuylkill River in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, built as a commercial waterway in the early 19th-century. Chartered in 1815 ...

near

Auburn, Pennsylvania Auburn is a borough in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 663 at the 2020 census. History The area was historically known as the "Scotchman's Lock". The first house in what is today Auburn was built in the late 1 ...

. It was the first transportation tunnel in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The tunnel was deliberately added to the canal as a novelty, as the hill it was bored though could have easily been bypassed. It became a major attraction, with people traveling over {{cite web, title=Profile of the Schuylkill Navigation , url=http://www.racc.edu/Yocum/canal/Reaches/Maps/Profiles_A/A-5.gif , access-date=2008-11-29 , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101206081820/https://www.racc.edu/Yocum/canal/Reaches/Maps/Profiles_A/A-5.gif , archive-date=2010-12-06 upriver from

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

to see it. It was periodically shortened, and in 1857 was daylighted to become an

open-cut In civil engineering, a cut or cutting is where soil or rock from a relative rise is removed. Cuts are typically used in road, rail, and canal construction to reduce a route's length and grade. Cut and fill construction uses the spoils from cu ...

References

Canals in Pennsylvania Transportation buildings and structures in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania Tunnels in Pennsylvania Schuylkill River Tunnels completed in 1821 Canal tunnels in the United States Water transportation in Pennsylvania 1821 establishments in Pennsylvania

See also

References