South Portal: (Satellite)
"The Cowan Tunnel, or Cumberland Mountain Tunnel, is a railroad tunnel near Cowan, Tennessee. The tunnel was built by the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad Company and was completed in 1852 with the tracks laid in 1853 with a total length of 2,200 ft (670 m)." [dbpedia]
tnhistoryforkids specifies a completion date of May 1851. It also reminds us that back in the 1850s, tunnels were built by hand, not with steam. "One man would hold and turn a short length of steel bit, while two others struck it with eight-pound hammers."
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| Citation: "Cowan Tunnel," approximately 1940, Looking Back at Tennessee Photograph Collection, 1890-1981, 7684, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Tennessee Virtual Archive, https://teva.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15138coll50/id/419, accessed 2025-02-23. |
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| Dale Proctor posted Cumberland Mountain tunnel, built by the NC&StL Railroad in 1852 to connect Nashville and Chattanooga. That’s the arch bridge carrying the Tracy City branch in front of it. Near Cowan Tenn., 6/20/86 |
I don't know if the NC&StL used east/west or north/south directions in their timetable, so I used geographic directions to label the satellite locations. I know of the NC&StL as the railroad that teamed up with the CB&Q to build a bridge across the Ohio River. I got a map to learn more about this railroad in this area of Tennessee.
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| 1903 Map from Wikipedia via Dennis DeBruler |
Google Maps labels the south portal of this tunnel as "Cowan Tunnel." The label "Cumberland Mountain Tunnel" takes you to a "cultural landmark" near the Cowan Railroad Museum (former NC&StL depot). So the actual length is 2,228' (679m).
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| Street View, Apr 2014 |
In most of the satellite images I looked at, the tracks south of the tunnel were hidden by the shadow of the trees. But this one shows us at least some of the track.
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| Global Earth, Sep 2014 |
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