The Baytown Tunnel or Baytown – La Porte Tunnel was a two-lane underwater motor-vehicle

tunnel A tunnel is an underground or undersea passageway. It is dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, or laid under water, and is usually completely enclosed except for the two portals common at each end, though there may be access and ve ...

connecting Baytown and La Porte, two suburbs of

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

. Completed in 1953, it traveled northeast-southwest underneath the

Houston Ship Channel The Houston Ship Channel, in Houston, Texas, is part of the Port of Houston, one of the busiest seaports in the world. The channel (geography), channel is the conduit for ocean-going vessels between Houston-area terminals and the Gulf of Mexico, ...

and had a length of . It was closed to vehicular traffic in 1995 with the opening of the

Fred Hartman Bridge The Fred Hartman Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge in the U.S. state of Texas spanning the Houston Ship Channel. The bridge carries of State Highway 146 (SH 146), between the cities of Baytown and La Porte (east of Houston). The bri ...

, and subsequently demolished beginning in 1997 in order for the

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the military engineering branch of the United States Army. A direct reporting unit (DRU), it has three primary mission areas: Engineer Regiment, military construction, and civil wor ...

to deepen the channel in 1998. The Fred Hartman Bridge had been designed to replace the Baytown Tunnel (of depth clearance ), which had to be removed when the

was deepened to , with a minimum bottom width, to accommodate larger ships. The last section of the Baytown Tunnel was removed on September 14, 1999, with removal of the tunnel being the responsibility of the

Texas Department of Transportation The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT ) is a Texas state government agency responsible for construction and maintenance of the state's immense Texas state highway system, state highway system and the support of the state's maritime trans ...

. "Welcome to the Houston-Galveston Navigation Channel Project Online Resource Center" (description),

USACE The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the military engineering branch of the United States Army. A direct reporting unit (DRU), it has three primary mission areas: #The Engineer Regiment, Engineer Regiment, military constr ...

, December 2005, webpage:
USACE-HGNC
.

History

Conceived and constructed as a means to improve traffic circulation, the tunnel opened in September 1953 as a replacement facility for the now-defunct Morgans Point Ferry at a final cost of $10 million. The land where the tunnel entered and exited was leased from

Exxon Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the largest direct successor of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the modern company was form ...

by the state for an annual fee of $1. The tunnel consisted of prefabricated sections that were sunk into place on the floor of the channel. The completed facility had a diameter of complete with a steel shell with of concrete lining. The actual roadbed inside was flat with a ventilation shaft running beneath its surface. The 300 and 250 feet long pipe sections of diameter 34 feet, 10 inches were fabricated by the Orange, Texas plant of Consolidated Western Steel. It served as a connection between State Highway 146 and State Highway 225 on the south to State Highway 146 and Loop 201 to the north. By the 1970s the tunnel had exceeded its capacity of 25,000 vehicles a day and in 1986 the

Texas Department of Highways and Public Transportation The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT ) is a Texas state government agency responsible for construction and maintenance of the state's immense Texas state highway system, state highway system and the support of the state's maritime trans ...

awarded a contract for its replacement with an eight-lane

cable-stayed bridge A cable-stayed bridge has one or more ''towers'' (or ''pylons''), from which wire rope, cables support the bridge deck. A distinctive feature are the cables or wikt:stay#Etymology 3, stays, which run directly from the tower to the deck, norm ...

. With the closure of the tunnel occurring in 1995, a clause in the original tunnel permit issued by the corps called for the Department of Transportation to remove the facility if it became unused or abandoned. By 1997 a proposal was made to dismantle the unused facility in long sections, float them down the channel and sink each section in of water at the

Freeport Liberty Ship Reef Freeport, a variant of free port, may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Freeport, name of several space stations in the video game ''Freelancer'' (2003) * Freeport, a fictional town in the video game ''SiN'' (1998) * ''Freeport: The Cit ...

in creating an

artificial reef An artificial reef (AR) is a human-created freshwater or marine benthic structure. Typically built in areas with a generally featureless bottom to promote Marine biology#Reefs, marine life, it may be intended to control #Erosion prevention, erosio ...

for marine wildlife in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

. This plan was scrapped due to both high costs in addition to the process resulting in over 50 closures of the channel to complete. The tunnel was removed by 1998 and its former structure was salvaged as paving aggregate.

References

External links

Baytown Tunnel, SH 146, and the Fred Hartman Bridge on TexasFreeways.com
for historical photos of the tunnel {{Texas Tunnels in Texas Crossings of the Houston Ship Channel Transportation buildings and structures in Harris County, Texas Greater Houston Galveston Bay Area Tunnels completed in 1953 Road tunnels in the United States