STRANGE CAREER OF A RAILROAD TUNNEL: Stumphouse Mountain Tunnel (top picture) in northwest South
Carolina, was started in 1852 by the Blue Ridge Railroad (a predecessor of the Carolina and
Northwestern) as part of a plan to put rails across the Blue Ridge from Anderson, S, C" to
Knoxville, Tenn., War put a permanent halt to the digging and blasting in 1861 with the
mile-and-a-quarter-long tunnel project only two-thirds completed, For almost 80 years
only wooded silence reigned where the boom town of Tunnel Hill had pulsed with life in the
1850's, Then, late in 1940, a professor from Clemson College investigated the tunnel during
the course of a Sunday afternoon drive, He saw in its size, temperature and humidity the
possibility of a "curing ground" for a blue-mold cheese of the Roquefort type, The tunnel was
temperature and humidity tested, fumigated and a section bricked off (above) for a cheese storage room, After World War II, Clemson College bought the tunnel, used it for more than a decade to cure fine blue cheese (right) before
moving the operation to a building on campus, (Photos by Clemson College)
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Pictured above is a segment of what its manufacturer, American Fabricators of Bellingham, Wash., describes as "the largest laminated arch in the world." The wooden arch, which recently moved in sections over Southern from East St. Louis Ill., to Jacksonville, Fla., was destined to become a part of a Jai Lai Fronton at Daytona Beach. When assembled, the arch measures 252 feet from base to base. Photo was made by C. S. Stagg, Southern's general agent at Seattle, as the shipment began its cross-country journey.
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