Sunday, November 8, 2026

Question: The Pennsylvania Turnpike’s original mountain tunnels weren’t dug for cars. What were they built for?

Answer: A railroad that never ran. In the 1880s, William H. Vanderbilt’s crews blasted tunnels through the Alleghenies for the South Pennsylvania Railroad, a rival to the Pennsylvania Railroad. The project collapsed, the half-finished tunnels sat untouched for decades, and most of them were reused when the Turnpike opened in 1940.