I stole the text from the Richmond Times Dispatch Website and I took this photo of the west end of the tunnel a few years ago right after they started renovating the warehouse next to the tunnel to turn it into more shitty loft apartments.
RICHMOND, Va. --
The morning that Walter S. Griggs Jr. offered me a driving tour
and history lesson on the Church Hill Tunnel broke dreary and rainy. I
asked him if he'd like to reschedule.
"The day the tunnel collapsed was like this one," said Griggs, a professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business. "I like the atmosphere."
So off we went. The tunnel and its deadly collapse in 1925 make for one of Richmond's most enduring and enigmatic stories. Despite that, I'd never paid it much mind and didn't even know the precise location of the tunnel.
Griggs, on the other hand, qualifies as something of an expert on the tunnel — or at least as someone with a severe preoccupation with it.
He grew up chasing caterpillars in Chimborazo Park, near the eastern end of the tunnel. As a young boy, Griggs would occasionally ride along on deliveries with his grandfather Martin O. Feitig, a grocer, and one day, Feitig turned down an unpaved road, pointed ahead to a sealed-off tunnel and told his grandson there were dead men and a train buried in there.
Griggs was rattled by the experience and happy to get home that day, but he couldn't forget the tunnel, the train or the men. When he grew older, he would drive his Corvair to the tunnel and ponder the fate of those behind the walled-off western entrance. Still later, he would go to the railroad yard in Fulton and imagine how the place looked when C&O engineer Thomas Joseph Mason, who had inexplicably gone back to give his wife a second kiss goodbye on the morning of Oct. 2, 1925, climbed into the cab of locomotive No. 231, then steered it into the tunnel's eastern entrance, never to see daylight again.
As a history major at the University of Richmond in 1963, Griggs made the tunnel the subject of his thesis. Now, almost a half-century later, he has returned to the tunnel and written a fuller account: "The Collapse of Richmond's Church Hill Tunnel."
Perhaps even more meaningful to him, he spearheaded an effort to erect a new historical marker on 18th Street, not 100 yards from the scene of the collapse, to commemorate the accident and memorialize those who lost their lives. The group responsible for the marker included Griggs, Jim Scott, David White and Louis Salomonsky, a developer involved with a condominium project adjacent to the western entrance to the tunnel.
Griggs saw the marker for the first time Thursday.
"I felt very strongly that this needed to be remembered," said the 71-year-old Griggs. "When you've got bodies in a hole and something that has been a part of Richmond lore … it was important to me to remember those men one way or another.
"There is a feeling of fulfillment."
At least four men died as a result of the collapse — the locomotive's fireman, who staggered out of the tunnel but died a short time later; Mason, the engineer, whose body was removed from the tunnel after a lengthy rescue effort; and two railroad laborers whose bodies were never recovered.
However, there has always been a suspicion that more — perhaps many more — were entombed in the tunnel. Griggs doubts there are more than 100, as some have claimed over the years, but he finds it "certainly plausible" more than two are buried there.
"Because if you were an African-American from Georgia … and you came here for a job, your family never expected to see you again," he said. "You could have walked in the tunnel and the tunnel collapsed … and nobody would have missed you."
The 4,000-foot-long tunnel runs from near 18th and Marshall streets on the western side to just below the end of Franklin Street on the east, angling under Broad Street at 25th.
The eastern portal is shrouded by trees and weeds and hidden from easy view, not far from the embankment — Griggs pointed it out as we drove past — that badly injured railroad fireman Benjamin Franklin Mosby scrambled up as he fled the tunnel following the collapse. He died later at Grace Hospital.
The tunnel was built to move cargo from the port of Richmond to a rail yard near 17th Street, but it probably shouldn't have been built at all.
The allure of commerce, it seemed, trumped good sense. Church Hill is largely soft clay and limestone, not the sturdy bedrock of western mountains where railroad tunnels are not uncommon. From the time construction began in 1872, the Church Hill Tunnel was plagued with cave-ins.
As it turned out, the tunnel was rendered pretty much obsolete by the turn of the century with the construction of a viaduct that carried trains around Church Hill and the failure of the city to deepen the shipping channel of the James River, which would have permitted larger ships and their cargo to visit the port.
The catastrophic collapse occurred during a project to enlarge and reopen the tunnel. It was sealed off the next year.
The locomotive remains in the tunnel, perhaps not more than 50 to 100 feet from the western entrance, under the edge of Jefferson Park, Griggs said. An attempt to excavate the site in 2006 and possibly remove the locomotive was halted by city officials who feared additional cave-ins.
"I don't know whether you can pick up on why some fool like me would spend as much time as I have on one project," said Griggs, who is charmingly self-deprecating and entertaining. "Growing up in Richmond is an important factor in this. But there's also a certain amount of mystery. Mystery is important."
"The day the tunnel collapsed was like this one," said Griggs, a professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business. "I like the atmosphere."
So off we went. The tunnel and its deadly collapse in 1925 make for one of Richmond's most enduring and enigmatic stories. Despite that, I'd never paid it much mind and didn't even know the precise location of the tunnel.
Griggs, on the other hand, qualifies as something of an expert on the tunnel — or at least as someone with a severe preoccupation with it.
He grew up chasing caterpillars in Chimborazo Park, near the eastern end of the tunnel. As a young boy, Griggs would occasionally ride along on deliveries with his grandfather Martin O. Feitig, a grocer, and one day, Feitig turned down an unpaved road, pointed ahead to a sealed-off tunnel and told his grandson there were dead men and a train buried in there.
Griggs was rattled by the experience and happy to get home that day, but he couldn't forget the tunnel, the train or the men. When he grew older, he would drive his Corvair to the tunnel and ponder the fate of those behind the walled-off western entrance. Still later, he would go to the railroad yard in Fulton and imagine how the place looked when C&O engineer Thomas Joseph Mason, who had inexplicably gone back to give his wife a second kiss goodbye on the morning of Oct. 2, 1925, climbed into the cab of locomotive No. 231, then steered it into the tunnel's eastern entrance, never to see daylight again.
As a history major at the University of Richmond in 1963, Griggs made the tunnel the subject of his thesis. Now, almost a half-century later, he has returned to the tunnel and written a fuller account: "The Collapse of Richmond's Church Hill Tunnel."
Perhaps even more meaningful to him, he spearheaded an effort to erect a new historical marker on 18th Street, not 100 yards from the scene of the collapse, to commemorate the accident and memorialize those who lost their lives. The group responsible for the marker included Griggs, Jim Scott, David White and Louis Salomonsky, a developer involved with a condominium project adjacent to the western entrance to the tunnel.
Griggs saw the marker for the first time Thursday.
"I felt very strongly that this needed to be remembered," said the 71-year-old Griggs. "When you've got bodies in a hole and something that has been a part of Richmond lore … it was important to me to remember those men one way or another.
"There is a feeling of fulfillment."
At least four men died as a result of the collapse — the locomotive's fireman, who staggered out of the tunnel but died a short time later; Mason, the engineer, whose body was removed from the tunnel after a lengthy rescue effort; and two railroad laborers whose bodies were never recovered.
However, there has always been a suspicion that more — perhaps many more — were entombed in the tunnel. Griggs doubts there are more than 100, as some have claimed over the years, but he finds it "certainly plausible" more than two are buried there.
"Because if you were an African-American from Georgia … and you came here for a job, your family never expected to see you again," he said. "You could have walked in the tunnel and the tunnel collapsed … and nobody would have missed you."
The 4,000-foot-long tunnel runs from near 18th and Marshall streets on the western side to just below the end of Franklin Street on the east, angling under Broad Street at 25th.
The eastern portal is shrouded by trees and weeds and hidden from easy view, not far from the embankment — Griggs pointed it out as we drove past — that badly injured railroad fireman Benjamin Franklin Mosby scrambled up as he fled the tunnel following the collapse. He died later at Grace Hospital.
The tunnel was built to move cargo from the port of Richmond to a rail yard near 17th Street, but it probably shouldn't have been built at all.
The allure of commerce, it seemed, trumped good sense. Church Hill is largely soft clay and limestone, not the sturdy bedrock of western mountains where railroad tunnels are not uncommon. From the time construction began in 1872, the Church Hill Tunnel was plagued with cave-ins.
As it turned out, the tunnel was rendered pretty much obsolete by the turn of the century with the construction of a viaduct that carried trains around Church Hill and the failure of the city to deepen the shipping channel of the James River, which would have permitted larger ships and their cargo to visit the port.
The catastrophic collapse occurred during a project to enlarge and reopen the tunnel. It was sealed off the next year.
The locomotive remains in the tunnel, perhaps not more than 50 to 100 feet from the western entrance, under the edge of Jefferson Park, Griggs said. An attempt to excavate the site in 2006 and possibly remove the locomotive was halted by city officials who feared additional cave-ins.
"I don't know whether you can pick up on why some fool like me would spend as much time as I have on one project," said Griggs, who is charmingly self-deprecating and entertaining. "Growing up in Richmond is an important factor in this. But there's also a certain amount of mystery. Mystery is important."
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