Sandhog is the slang term given to urban

miner A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting ...

s and

construction worker A construction worker is a worker employed in the physical construction of the built environment and its infrastructure. Definition By some definitions, workers may be engaged in manual labour as unskilled or semi-skilled workers; they may be s ...

s who work underground on a variety of excavation projects in New York City, and later other cities. Generally these projects involve tunneling, caisson excavation, road building, or some other type of underground construction or mining projects. The miners work with a variety of tools including using

tunnel boring machine A tunnel boring machine (TBM), also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They may also be used for microtunneling. They can be designed to bore throu ...

s and

explosives An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An expl ...

to remove material for the project they are building. The term sandhog is an American

colloquialism Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conversa ...

. Starting with their first job in 1872, the Brooklyn Bridge, the "hogs" have built a large part of the New York City infrastructure including the subway tunnels and sewers, Water Tunnels No. 1 and No. 2 as well as the currently under construction Water Tunnel No. 3, the Lincoln,

Holland Holland is a geographical regionG. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, ''Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I'', Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105 and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th c ...

, Queens-Midtown, and Brooklyn-Battery tunnels. In addition, they worked on the foundations for most of the bridges and many of the skyscrapers in the city. Traditionally, these workers have been Irish or Irish American. Some

West Indian A West Indian is a native or inhabitant of the West Indies (the Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago). For more than 100 years the words ''West Indian'' specifically described natives of the West Indies, but by 1661 Europeans had begun to use it ...

s are now sandhogs. Sandhogging is often a tradition and is passed down through

generation A generation refers to all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively. It can also be described as, "the average period, generally considered to be about 20–⁠30 years, during which children are born and gro ...

s of families; since mining projects span decades, it is not uncommon for multi-generations of families to work together on the same job.

Warren Beatty Henry Warren Beatty ( né Beaty; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker, whose career spans over six decades. He was nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Director ...

was a rare exception in the 1950s, as a recently-arrived to New York individual, who worked as a Sandhog relatively briefly on the third tube of the

Lincoln Tunnel The Lincoln Tunnel is an approximately tunnel under the Hudson River, connecting Weehawken, New Jersey, to the west with Midtown Manhattan in New York City to the east. It carries New Jersey Route 495 on the New Jersey side and unsigned New Y ...

Appearances in media

*In the October 1997 issue of ''

Esquire Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentleman ...

'' magazine, a series of photographs by David Allee, with a text accompaniment by Thomas Kelly, document the life and work of sandhogs. In 2006 at

Grand Central Terminal Grand Central Terminal (GCT; also referred to as Grand Central Station or simply as Grand Central) is a commuter rail terminal located at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Grand Central is the southern termi ...

in New York City there was a large-scale photo and video installation about the sandhogs, "The Sandhog Project", created by artist Gina LeVay. *Thomas Kelly's 1997 novel about sandhogs, ''Payback'', was reissued in 2008 as ''Sandhogs'' () by Soft Skull Press. *

David Grann David Elliot Grann (born March 10, 1967) is an American journalist, a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' magazine, and a best-selling author. His first book, '' The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon,'' was published by D ...

's 2003 article about sandhogs, ''City of Water'', appeared in the September 1 issue of ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...

'' and was republished in his collection '' The Devil and Sherlock Holmes''. It has been optioned for a movie. *On September 7, 2008,

The History Channel History (formerly The History Channel from January 1, 1995 to February 15, 2008, stylized as HISTORY) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Dis ...

began "Sandhogs" a series on the sandhogs. * The '' CSI: NY'' episode "A Man a Mile" deals with the death of a sandhog during construction of Water Tunnel No. 3. *The ''

Cold Case A cold case is a crime, or a suspected crime, that has not yet been fully resolved and is not the subject of a current criminal investigation, but for which new information could emerge from new witness testimony, re-examined archives, new or re ...

'' episode "Sandhogs" ( Season 4, Episode 3) deals with the death of a Sandhog in 1948. *A ''

Public Broadcasting System The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

'' (PBS) sponsored documentary show ''

American Experience ''American Experience'' is a television program airing on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. The program airs documentaries, many of which have won awards, about important or interesting events and people in American h ...

'' 2014 episode "The Rise and Fall of Penn Station" details the work done by the sandhogs in the creation of the rail tunnels connecting New York and New Jersey. *The podcast '' 99% Invisible'' released an episode on sandhogs in March 2015. *Chuck Wendig's urban fantasy novel, The Blue Blazes (). The protagonist is a former sandhog, and one of the central elements of the plot is Water Tunnel No. 3, a sandhog construction project. *The final episode of season 4 of The Strain refers to sandhogs as the builders of Water Tunnel No. 3, where the scenes were filmed. *

Scorpion Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the order Scorpiones. They have eight legs, and are easily recognized by a pair of grasping pincers and a narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back and always endi ...

Season 3 Episode 14, where Walter refers to the workers as mole rats, as he felt the sandhogs nickname 'is illogical', and Toby corrects him to sandhogs.
Scorpion s03e14 Episode Script * On September 12, 1956,

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...

Screen Directors Playhouse ''Screen Directors Playhouse'' (sometimes written as ''Screen Directors' Playhouse'') is an American radio and television anthology series which brought leading Hollywood actors to the NBC microphones beginning in 1949. The radio program broadcas ...

aired the final episode of the program, a teleplay directed by

Allan Dwan Allan Dwan (born Joseph Aloysius Dwan; April 3, 1885 – December 28, 1981) was a pioneering Canadian-born American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter. Early life Born Joseph Aloysius Dwan in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Dwan, was ...

and starring

William Bendix William Bendix (January 14, 1906 – December 14, 1964) was an American film, radio, and television actor, who typically played rough, blue-collar characters. He is best remembered for his role in ''Wake Island'', which earned him an Academy ...

and

Dennis Harper Dennis O. Harper is an American educator and the founder of Generation YES, a nonprofit technology education organization founded in 1999. He is an active advocate for the transformative power of technology in education and for student leadership ...

. The title alludes to the high air pressure necessary to keep the river from flooding the work site. The episode tells the story of a father and son working as "Sandhoggers" constructing a tunnel below the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between Ne ...

Literature

Colum McCann Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and now lives in New York. He is a Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence at Hunter College, New York. McCann's work has been published in over 40 languages, and h ...

's "This Side of Brightness," Picador, New York 1998, . * Jimmy Breslin "Table Money," Tickner & Fields, New York 1986, . * E. L. Doctorow's "

Ragtime (novel) ''Ragtime'' is a novel by E. L. Doctorow, published in 1975. It is a work of historical fiction mainly set in the New York City area from 1902 until 1912. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''Ragtime'' number 86 on its list of the 100 best Eng ...

": Chapter 13, Random House, 1975,

Movies

* In the 1943 romantic comedy '' No Time for Love'', photographer

Claudette Colbert Claudette Colbert ( ; born Émilie Claudette Chauchoin; September 13, 1903July 30, 1996) was an American actress. Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of talking pictur ...

is on assignment to take pictures of a tunnel project under the Hudson River and falls for sandhog

Fred MacMurray Frederick Martin MacMurray (August 30, 1908 – November 5, 1991) was an American actor. He appeared in more than one hundred films and a successful television series, in a career that spanned nearly a half-century. His career as a major film le ...

. * In the 1996 film ''

Daylight Daylight is the combination of all direct and indirect sunlight during the daytime. This includes direct sunlight, diffuse sky radiation, and (often) both of these reflected by Earth and terrestrial objects, like landforms and buildings. Sun ...

'', directed by

Rob Cohen Rob Cohen (born March 12, 1949) is an American director and producer of film and television. Beginning his career as an executive producer at 20th Century Fox, Cohen produced and developed numerous high-profile film and television programs, inc ...

and starring

Sylvester Stallone Sylvester Enzio Stallone (; born Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone, ) is an American actor and filmmaker. After his beginnings as a struggling actor for a number of years upon arriving to New York City in 1969 and later Hollywood in 1974, h ...

, there are references to "sandhogs" as well as detailed history on how these men lived under the pressures of building the Holland Tunne

*In 2006 film '' Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York'', directed by Robert Lee and starring

Pascale Hutton Pascale Hutton (born June 14, 1979) is a Canadian actress. She was born in Creston, British Columbia. Hutton attended the conservatory acting program at the University of Alberta in Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadia ...

, there is reference to "sandhog" when Hutton says that she is one

* In 2007 Edward Burns also narrated the fil
The Greatest Tunnel Ever Built
for

References

External links

{{Wiktionary
New York City Sandhogs Local 147
a New York Times interactive feature Construction trades workers People in mining

Appearances in media

Literature

Movies

References

Further reading

External links