BLUE-RIDGE RAILROAD TUNNEL HILL/TOWN CEMETERY, Oconee County, SC A.K.A. Stumphouse Mountain, Mountain Rest or Whetstone, SC Version 2.0, 16-Jan-2003, C015.TXT, C015 **************************************************************** REPRODUCING NOTICE: ------------------- These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format for profit, or presentation by any other organization, or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. Paul M Kankula - nn8nn Seneca, SC, USA Oconee County SC GenWeb Coordinator **************************************************************** DATAFILE INPUT . : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in Mar-2002 Linda Flynn at ke8fd@@bellsouth.net.con in Jun-2002 HISTORY WRITE-UP : Mountain Rest Community Club in 1984 Hurley E. Badders, Pendleton Historical Commission Unknown Author, Tugaloo Tribune Newspaper IMAGES ......... : Gary Flynn at (visit above website) in Apr-2002 TRANSCRIPTION .. : Gary Flynn at (visit above website) in Apr-2002 CEMETERY LOCATION: ------------------ From Walhalla take RT. 28 north to entrance for Stumphouse Tunnel Park. On the the right side of tunnel is path leading to top of hill above tunnel. Very steep and difficult climb. After getting to top follow path leading to airshaft. Airshaft has high fence around it. Follow old road from the right side of airshaft 100 yards. Look for old block wall 2-3 rows high about 40-50 ft from right side of road. hard to see because of downed trees. Graves are inside of wall and also behind and to the left of wall. Site is overgrown with brush and downed trees. Latitude N 34 48.802 x Longitude W 83 07.522 CHURCH/CEMETERY HISTORY: ------------------------ A railroad through the mountains of Oconee County often has been called a dream. It was more than a dream, and evidence remains today of the actual work which went on for several years to make it a realization. The best known piece of evidence today is known as Stumphouse Tunnel Park, a spot commemorating the idea of connecting South Carolina to Tennessee and on into the Midwest. Cost, the eruption of the War Between the States, and the solid granite of Stumphouse Mountain itself proved to be too much. Questions arise today - why build a railroad through such terrain? The answer is simple - a direct route for more and better goods which had to be imported into South Carolina. In the 1850s, when the Blue Ridge Railroad Company was conceived, South Carolina was importing corn, wheat, flour, bacon, lard, tobacco, whiskey, salt, lime, horses, mules, and cattle. East Tennessee was one of the states producing these goods in excess of domestic demand, and hogsheads of bacon and ham marked "Cincinnati" could be seen at railroad depots in Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, and Anderson. To secure those goods, South Carolina was ordering items which came from Cincinnati by way of West Virginia to Maryland, on to Charleston, and then to Anderson - a distance of 1,670 miles. Sometimes products would come from Ohio or Tennessee to the East Coast and by boat to South Carolina - a distance of 2,000 miles. From Chattanooga to Charleston, it was 575 miles by railroad and 700 miles by sea for a total of 1,275 miles. If the railroad had been built, it would have been 196 miles from Knoxville to Anderson, and 459 miles from Cincinnati to Anderson, 586 miles from Cincinnati to Columbia, or 683 miles from there to Charleston. It made the reasons obvious. The Blue Ridge Railroad was chartered on December 16, 1852, to build a line from Edgefield via Abbeville, Anderson, and Walhalla in South Carolina; Rabun Gap in Georgia; and down the Little Tennessee River in North Carolina and Tennessee to Knoxville. The State of South Carolina subscribed $500,000 to help finance the initial construction. The plan, if successful, would have made Charleston the major deepwater East Coast shipping port, and it might have altered the course of history. A New York construction company, Anson Bangs, was hired in July of 1853, and they began work on the right of way in November of the same year. Two years later, Bangs sold his interests to A. Birdsall and Company, and in 1856 the company was dismissed when the state discovered no real work was being done. In May of 1856, the contract was awarded to the George Collyer Company of London, England. The plan at the time was to build three great bridges, huge fills and cuts, and twelve tunnels, three of which would have been in South Carolina. By January of 1857, the rails had been laid from Anderson to Pendleton over a rather easy grade, crossing several ridges of land, between the Saluda and Seneca Rivers. The state hired a second work force, which was assigned to the major tunnel project known as the Stumphouse Tunnel, and work had started in 1853 with a survey and the building of a construction camp named Tunnel Hill. The camp grew to a population of 1,500 workers at one time. From 1853 to 1859, the State of South Carolina poured more than a million dollars into the one-and-a-half-mile tunnel project, which was slowed well below estimates due to the hardness of the blue granite rock. The 5,863-foot tunnel at Stumphouse was built by dropping four vertical shafts some 200 feet to the tunnel grade to provide eight working faces. Using simple hand drills, hammers, and black powder, the Irishmen hired by Collyer were forced to rely on muscle power to cut into the granite. Despite this handicap, by April of 1859, the tunnel sections were advancing by 200 feet a month. In August, with 4,363 feet of tunnel completed in four sections, the state refused to extend more money to the project, and the enterprise was abandoned. Still, in 1859, some 500 Irish families were living at Tunnel Hill. In addition to the houses and general store, the town had seventeen saloons to slake the thirst of the laborers. Although black powder blasting is far from safe, only two fatalities were recorded during the tunneling time due to blasting, but several others were recorded which resulted from drunken brawls. Others died by falling some 200 feet down the shafts. The company between 1859 and 1861 did some additional rail and grading work, with the railroad reaching West Union. Three-quarters of the grading work had been completed from there to Stumphouse, but the total expenditure now stood at two-and-a-half million dollars. Before more money could be raised, shots were fired at Fort Sumter in the Charleston Harbor, and the War Between the States began. Work had been going on for the Saddle and Middle tunnels between Stumphouse and Walhalla, and grading for them is still in evidence. Both are closed now, and filled with water for the most part. In the 1880s, and again in 1900, attempts were made again to tackle Stumphouse, but the granite remained solid. An interesting - if not totally true - story was related about Stumphouse Mountain and Tunnel in the 1850s by the Reverend J.J. O'Connell, a circuit riding Catholic priest who wrote a book called Catholicity in the Carolinas and Georgia. He had this to say about his trips into the tunnel area: The original name [Stumphouse] was no less appropriate; early in the century a daring huntsman of the range, as a protection against the nightly approach of the bear, the wolf and the savages, the most numerous inhabitants, constructed a log cabin on the outstretched branches of a giant oak, the monarch of the forest, and sheltered on three sides around from the wintry winds that came howling down from Northern wastes. He lived, like St. Simon the Stylite, a number of years sole monarch of all he surveyed, happy and unmolested, and at last fell under the inevitable stroke of time, which spares neither high or low, I beheld the tall stump shortly before it fell to the ground, crushed by the weight of years. At some distance may be seen, to this day, the ruins of the Necropolis of the Cherokees, whose early history no man knoweth; unlettered slabs of granite rock, frequently scattered on all sides, mark the resting place of the unknown dead. But Assyrian kings and Egyptian potentates are no better remembered, though they sleep under mausoleums on whose brow forty centuries have made no impression. That the graves were rifled on the southern slopes of the mountain, in quest of the traditional treasures entombed with the remains of chiefs, is evident from the disordered situation of the mortuary slabs, scarcely two of them lying in the same direction. This being a gold region, the cupidity of adventurers may have enticed them hither in the earliest days of our colonies. Mr. Simms intimates that this may have been an Eldorado of the adventurous Spaniard, no less than the realms of Montezuma. The mineral wealth of the country has never been unstored. Some feeble attempts were made, the effort not exceeding what miners call prospecting. It has been said truthfully by one who has experience in both that if the same appliances were used as in the gold fields of California the recompense would be as favorable in this region. Messrs. Humbird and Hitchcock, having contracted with the company to open the tunnel, brought from Pennsylvania and New York a number of Irish laborers, chiefly Catholics, to perform the work. This was about 1854. An attempt was already made to open and work, but too feeble to afford reasonable hope of early success. The present body comprised about five hundred people of all ages. Many of the operators had families, and kept boarding shanties for the unmarried men. Having lived on public works for many years, where all disorders of the camp prevailed without any of the restraints, the people stood sadly in want of the unremitting care of a resident priest. Having become numerically the most important point on the entire mission, I immediately set about organizing for the permanent residence of a priest, and made this the headquarters of all the up-country missions, beginning with Anderson. I constructed a frame church, large enough to accommodate the people, and an adjoining priest's house. It was dedicated to St. Patrick. I was efficiently aided by my brother, Father Lawrence, and toward the end by Father Joseph, who was ordained in 1858 and spent his month alternately with us on the hill. I established a school, which was conducted by James Casey, and by Cornelius Gorman, where the children of both sexes were instructed and thoroughly imbued with Catholic principles. Some of the men were addicted to the use of ardent spirits, whenever they found means and opportunity to indulge their favorite passion, from which as a necessary consequence followed many other vices, besides squalor, neglect of all religious duties, and an untold amount of bodily discomfort and suffering. I organized a temperance society, held weekly meetings, and maintained its regularity to the last. This was the only means of succeeding with the people. The Reverend O'Connell went on to tell of his success, making everyone church- goers and non-drinkers, and how he made each of them save their money rather than wasting it. Many of the things he recounts in his book are in error, but as a whole - and from one man's point of view - he has left us with an illustration of how things were in those days. A portion of an 1860 U.S. Census, enumerated by William H. Stribling, shows several families residing at Tunnel Hill. Certainly there were others, but the only names recorded include the families of Jesse Smith, Sarah Brown, Thomas Canove, Dennis Rearden, Ephraim King, Nathan Cox, Patterson Orr, Alexander Orr, A. West, and two James Kings. Also, Patrick Dugan, Michael Boyle, Thomas Nations, Margaret McCall, Sarah Wade, John Mulehi, Timothy Human, and James Elliott. Canove, Rearden, Dugan, Boyle, Mulehi, and Human were listed as being natives of Ireland. The others were listed as natives of South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. A story, which appeared some years ago in an Oconee County newspaper told of William Welch, and he was described as a legend of the tunnel. The story states he was one of the immigrants who came to Stumphouse and was a graduate engineer from the University of Edinburgh. He found himself unemployed when work stopped and the war began, and he bought 145 acres of land on Lick Log Creek, where he farmed to provide for his large family. There are many stories about him, the newspaper stated, saying he was "an engineer with a dream". Legend has it that until he was 100 years old he rode his horse, Kicking Nell, 29 miles into Walhalla to get his mail. An article appeared in the Keowee Courier on September 9, 1908, relating his visit to the Courier office one week after celebrating his 100th birthday. The story states he lies in an unmarked grave about a quarter of a mile behind the home of Jack Lombard. Several descendants of William Welch live in Oconee County. Some of them are George and Leo Keown of Mountain Rest, Ray Head of Walhalla, and Lowell Ross, who practices law in Walhalla. Today, the visitor sees evidence of the work, which went on more than 100 years ago. Stumphouse Tunnel is open for some 1,600 feet, and more than two million people have visited there since the area was developed as a park in the 1970s by the Pendleton District Historical and Recreational Commission. Visitors can see the cuts made by the hand drills. They can look up the number one shaft, where it is always raining due to the conditions of light and humidity. The interior of the tunnel is always 50 degrees, and the humidity is in excess of 90 per cent. An iron gate and brick wall near the opening is a modern-day addition, as Clemson University once aged blue cheese in the tunnel. A picnic area, a small campground, and hiking trails are on the grounds. Also, at the edge of the campground, is Issaqueena Falls, connected to the legend of an Indian maiden. In one version of the legend, Issaqueena jumped to her death from the falls to avoid continued persecution from the Indians for marrying a white trader. In another version, she jumped to a ledge, hid until dark, then joined her husband who was away trading with the Indians in Alabama. A hiking trail thirteen miles in length follows the old railroad bed from the campground to Walhalla. It is now a national Boy Scout trail and is maintained by scout troops in Oconee County. Prepared by Hurley E. Badders, Executive Director, Pendleton Historical and Recreational Commission. ------------------------------------ From 1853 to 1859, the State of SC poured more than a million dollars into the 1.5 mile tunnel project which was slowed well below estimates due to the hardness of the blue granite rock. Currently, the incomplete tunnels are closed and filled with water for the most part. In 1859, some 500 Irish families, chiefly Catholics, were living at Tunnel Hill. In addition to the houses and general store, the town had 17 saloons to slake the thirst of the laborers. Although black power blasting is far from safe, only 2 fatalities were recorded during the tunneling time due to blasting, but several others were recorded which resulted from drunken brawls. Others died by falling some 200 feet down the shafts. When the funding for the construction of this project ran out, Tunnel Town quickly disappeared. Afterwards, Civil War deserters tore down the wooden buildings and used them for fire wood. Many of the graves were also dug up in search of jewelry. This information is from "An Informal History of Mountain Rest, South Carolina" dated July 4, 1984. ------------------------------------ 200 Tombstones In Graveyard Of Short-Lived Tunnel Hill Town TUNNEL HILL - The old expression, "Death was a way of life," is highly ap- plicable to life on Tunnel Hill in the 1850s. The town of Tunnel Hill. with a population of some 1500, was established in the mid 1850s. when the Blue Ridge Rail Road was under construction, and it declined immediately after that project failed in 1859. There are some 200 tombstones in the graveyard of the town on top of Stumphouse Mountain. For such a short period of existence, that number of deaths is excessive, and suggests the violent nature of the inhabitants of the town. THERE ARE nine deaths of a violent nature which are known to have occurred at Tunnel Hill. One of the sub-contractors of the Blue Ridge Rail Road, a stranger in Tunnel Hill, was murdered one night by a group of thugs who mistakenly thought he was carrying a lot of money. None of them knew his name or where he was from, and so he was buried where he fell. Near shaft number two, a man named Smith insulted an Irishman, and was beat to death on the spot. At shaft number two, a man named Kelly, who emptied buckets of excavated stone as they came up from the bottom of the shaft, lost his footing and fell, striking an Irishman named Collins who was coming up with another bucket. Both men were killed. AT SHAFT number three, two men were killed by a cave in, and another died when he was scalded by a hoisting engine. At shaft number four, a young Irishman attempted to jump into a bucket as it went down the shaft at 6 a.m. He lost his footing and fell, his body lodging in the shafts supporting timbers. Another man, walking in the tunnel below shaft number four, was hit in the head and killed by a hand drill which fell from a bucket overhead. Finally, a German whose duty it was to fill lamps in the tunnel, was killed when the material in his loading box exploded in his hands. By: Unknown Author, Tugaloo Tribune Newspaper TOMBSTONE TRANSCRIPTION NOTES: ------------------------------ a. = age at death b. = date-of-birth d. = date-of-death h. = husband m. = married p. = parents w. = wife It appears that there might have been 50 to 200 graves. Numerous graves have been opened in search of gold by Civil War deserters. The Cherokee Indian Necropolis has also been reported as being within eyesight of this cemetery. The graves are marked with large slab stones and also have been desecrated by deserters.