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)