Residence Of Hon. W. B. Plunkett.
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not down; and in 1848, when the Troy and Greenfield Railroad Company was formed, we find the citizens of the town eagerly interested, and in the next few years holding town meetings, appointing committees and subscribing for stock and bonds in the enterprise. The work was actually began in 1854, with a loan from the state of Massachusetts, and was prosecuted with more or less vigor until 1861, when the funds gave out, and in the next year the state foreclosed its mortgage on the property. Commissioners were then appointed, and for six years the work went on by state appropriations. At the end of that time seven million dollars had been expended, and the work was about one-third completed. Authority was then given by the Legislature for the completion of the work by contract and in 1869 Francis and Walter Shanley entered into an agreement to complete the tunnel for about five million dollars. They entered upon the work with great vigor, and notwithstanding dire predictions of ultimate failure and the openly expressed opinion of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes in some of his verses that the millennium and the opening of the tunnel would occur at about the same date, carried it on to completion. It was on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1873, that the final blast was fired and the valley of the Hoosac and the valley of the Deerfield were united. The tunnel was completed after a work of nineteen years, an expenditure of twelve to fifteen millions and the loss of over one hundred lives. The total length is four and three-quarters miles, and when the final blast was fired there was a variation of but five-sixteenths of an inch in the meeting of the two headings.
During the construction of the great work over one thousand men were employed; and the period was one of growth and prosperity for
North Adams. The presence of this large body of miners gave that section of the town the appearance and many of the characteristics of a western mining camp; and it may be that at this time the town took on the air of a western town, which many strangers at the present claim they can readily detect. At any rate, besides securing a new route to Boston, North Adams gained in prestige, wealth and population during the tunnel period, and in addition to this had fastened to her
Center Street, Adams.
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09 May 2006
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