In 1999 this vent was impacted by a rock slide, however in 2000 the town of Walhalla re-excavated the tunnel and safely returned it to public use.Īfter a developer attempted to purchase the property from the City of Walhalla in 2007, Naturaland Trust, a conservation agency created by C. The structural integrity of the tunnel is solid and almost no cracking is apparent minus an enlarged vent halfway through the tunnel. The tunnel is easily accessible by foot, a few yards from a gravel parking lot. Inside the tunnel the temperature is a constant 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) with humidity of 85%. It is open daily except Christmas Day and during inclement weather from 10am until 5pm. Today, Stumphouse tunnel is operated as a public park along with nearby Isaqueena Falls by the city of Walhalla. Only the entrance to the tunnel is visible.īeginning in the 1950s Stumphouse tunnel was used by Clemson University to grow blue cheese until the 1970s when the blue cheese operation was relocated to air-conditioned cheese ripening rooms where the tunnel environment was duplicated. Saddle is partially completed yet is mostly submerged by a small lake. Saddle Tunnel, the last of the South Carolina complex was also begun for a short distance 1.5 miles north of Middle Tunnel. Middle Tunnel, a quarter mile from Stumphouse Tunnel was successfully completed but mostly collapsed and was partially sealed off in the mid-1900s. The tunnel had been excavated to a length of 1,617 feet of the planned 5,863 total feet. Today, where the tunnel was meant to end on the other side of the mountain, there remains a mound of earth (intended for the railway tracks) submerged during the summer months under Crystal Lake, located just west of Highway 28.Īs a part of the planned Blue Ridge Railroad, two other tunnels were begun in the 1850s and are all connected by terrain at railroad grade. By 1859, the State of South Carolina had spent over a million dollars on the tunnel and refused to spend any more on the project, therefore the tunnel work was abandoned. Many of the workers lived in housing on top of Stumphouse mountain called Tunnel Hill. There Stumphouse tunnel along with three other tunnels was to be built.Ĭonstruction on Stumphouse tunnel began in 1856 when the George Collyer Company of London brought many Irish workers into the area for this project. Construction on the railway was begun in the late 1850s and was successful through most of South Carolina until hitting the mountains around Wallhalla in Oconee County.
In 1852, 13 miles of tunnel were proposed to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains through South Carolina, North Carolina, and into Tennessee. It connects Stumphouse Park to Oconee State Park. The park is also home to the 1.5-mile Stumphouse Passage and the new 5-mile Ross Mountain Passage, the Upstate end of the nearly 500-mile cross-state Palmetto Trail. It has filled with water over the years and is no longer accessible. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.The tunnel was first proposed in 1835 by residents of Charleston, South Carolina as a new and shorter route for the Blue Ridge Railroad between Charleston and the Ohio river valley area which until then was only accessible by bypassing the mountains entirely to the South and then traveling up north through Georgia and middle Tennessee. The Saddleback Tunnel can be found at the end of the trail. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file.
#Stumphouse tunnel software#
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