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N0KFQ > TODAY 01.11.14 16:01l 63 Lines 2819 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 38932_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Nov 1
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<I0OJJ<N6RME<N0KFQ
Sent: 141101/1600Z 38932@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.60
Nov 1, 1930:
Detroit-Windsor Tunnel is dedicated
On this day in 1930, President Herbert Hoover turns a telegraphic
"golden key" in the White House to mark the opening of the
5,160-foot-long Detroit-Windsor Tunnel between the U.S. city of
Detroit, Michigan, and the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario. The
tunnel opened to regular traffic on November 3. The first
passenger car it carried was a 1929 Studebaker.
Since the beginning of the 19th century, Detroiters and
Windsorians had been trying to find a way to move people and
goods back and forth across the Detroit River. For decades,
railroad interests proposed tunnels and bridges galore, but
powerful advocates of marine shipping always managed to block
those projects: They did not want to lose business to faster and
more capacious trains. (Plans for bridges were particularly
troubling to those shippers, since just one low-hanging
over-the-water crossing had the potential to keep high-masted
sailing vessels off the river altogether.)
In 1871, the region's railroads finally won permission to build a
trans-national tunnel, and workers began to dig into the river at
the foot of Detroit's San Antoine Street; however, they were
forced to abandon the project just 135 feet under the river when
they struck a pocket of sulfurous gas that made workers so ill
that none could be persuaded to return. Likewise, in 1879,
another tunnel had to be abandoned when it ran right into some
unexpectedly difficult to excavate limestone under the river. The
first successful Michigan-to-Canada tunnel project finally opened
in 1891: the 6,000-foot-long Grand Trunk Railway Tunnel at Port
Huron.
Soon enough, it was clear to most people on both sides of the
border that they needed to build some sort of structure for
transporting automobiles across the river. In June 1919, the
mayors of Detroit and Windsor decided to build a city-to-city
tunnel that would serve as a memorial to the American and
Canadian soldiers who had died in World War I. Even after
advocates of the under-construction Ambassador Bridge tried to
frighten away the tunnel's backers, spreading rumors about the
danger of subterranean carbon monoxide poisoning, tunnel boosters
were undeterred. (They were, one said, "inspired by God to have
this tunnel built.")
Construction began in 1928. First, barges dredged a
2,454-foot-long trench across the river; next, workers sank nine
8,000-ton steel-and-concrete tubes into the trench and welded
them together. An elaborate ventilation system kept the air in
the tunnel safe to breathe.
In the first nine weeks it was open, nearly 200,000 cars passed
through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. Today, about 9 million
vehicles use the tunnel each year.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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