Perkasie Borough is a town created by a groundbreaking train tunnel from the 1850s that has seen its share of controversies since the day the first pick stuck the hard rock of Landis Ridge.
Today, the 2,150 long Perkasie tunnel connects East Rockhill Township and Perkasie, with the tunnel’s Perkasie opening on private property in the Borough’s old Mont Alto section. The tunnel’s excavation in the 1850s took about two and a half years, with laborers using black powder and hand tools to dig through the Landis Ridge. The project had several fatalities during the construction phases and also during an expansion to add a second track in the tunnel during the 1880s.
Why Was The Tunnel Built Anyway?
Back when I wrote my first Perkasie history book, An American Hometown, in 2021, there didn’t seem to be a clear answer in archival newspapers and journals about why the North Pennsylvania Railroad wanted to tunnel through so much rock. A recently obtained a copy of a brief history of the North Pennsylvania Railroad compiled in 1944 that answers the question.
Jay Veeder Hare was the secretary of the Reading Railroad, which had acquired a lease on the North Pennsylvania Railroad in 1879, and Hare’s history published in 1944 for the Reading Railroad compiled company reports and newspaper articles of the North Penn railroad’s old days.
In the early 1850s, the leaders of Philadelphia, Bucks, and Northampton counties combined to promote the first direct railroad connecting Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley. Their common purpose, Vare said, was to keep New York City from monopolizing the railroad trade in Northeastern Pennsylvania. On Oct. 9, 1852, the leaders held a mass public meeting at the Samson Street Hall in Philadelphia to promote the project. The new railroad would connect Philadelphia, Easton and the Delaware Water Gap.
The new railroad’s chief engineer, Edward Miller, sent out a corps of engineers to find the best direct route with the fewest obstacles. Miller reported that any route would need to avoid the Neshaminy and Tohickon Creeks in Bucks County and have easily attainable right-of-way lands. Miller’s team recommended a railroad through “the flatlands east of Quakertown to Rocky Ridge at Coffle’s Gap thence through Landis Ridge by a tunnel, the length of which will be almost 1,800 feet, and across the northeast branch of the Perkiomen near Sellersville.” A second tunnel would need to be excavated at Gwynedd in Montgomery County. But the advantages of building a railroad with many straight lines outweighed the cost of the two tunnels.
The train tunnel, far left, in Fowler’s 1893 perspective drawing of Perkasie.
Digging started at the Landis Ridge tunnel, later known as the Perkasie Tunnel, on June 16, 1853. It was hard at first to find labors to use “black powder, the pick hand, shovel, dump wagon, and wheelbarrow as the contractors’ equipment.” And when workers were finally found, other conditions played havoc, Miller said. “Section #36 is the most costly on this road as it includes the tunnel through Landis Ridge. The management has been particularly unfortunate,” Miller told shareholders in 1855. The first contractors operating a steam engine for excavation were fired for incompetency. Miller hired a second contractor and a full workforce when disaster struck in 1854.
“In a few weeks, they put the whole section in excellent working condition and had a large force employed when the cholera broke out among their men with much malignity,” Miller reported. Doctors ordered a quarantine, but the disease killed the skilled steam-engine operators hired by Miller. The railroad isolated the surviving workers and brought in new, inexperienced workers, who wrecked the steam-engine excavation equipment.
Miller’s report about the cholera outbreak confirms later accounts of a mass epidemic at the Landis Ridge tunnel project. In 1899, the Perkasie Central News spoke with Roger Hearld, who had worked on the Landis Ridge tunnel. Hearld confirmed that the name of the second contractor was Grant. And he also recalled the cholera outbreak. “More than a thousand different men were engaged in the enterprise during the four years of work. They were killed, and died by scores of disease, an epidemic of cholera carrying a hundred off in a season,” Hearld said. “Some were buried in Haycock Catholic cemetery, many in an improvised graveyard near Rockhill hill itself. Their last resting place would be hard to find.”
“Accidents in the tunnel were everyday affairs,” Hearld told the newspaper. In one instance, a large falling rock hit a man steering a drilling crew who died instantly. There was also riot at the tunnel among its Irish laborers and one of the rioters was killed by a local militia.
In June 1854, there were other confirmed worker fatalities. “Two Irishman named Fitzpatrick and Sweeny were killed in the Big Tunnel, on the North Pennsylvania Railroad, by the falling of a portion of the roofing, which, we understand, was loosened by blasting. … Some of the men, it is said, had refused to work a week before account of the unsafe condition of the roof, but had been induced to return to work again,” reported the Lebanon Courier.
Other Problems at the Tunnel
The Landis Ridge tunnel opened in early January 1857 and eventually the railroad prospered when the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad took over the system in 1879. The tunnel became heavily used and in 1886 the new operators decided to add an arch to its roof to allow for a second track through the tunnel. The project did not go well, in part because of a dispute between Italian laborers and the railroad over working conditions.
In August 1886, an incident at the tunnel foreshadowed trouble. “Work is still progressing in the tunnel on the North Penn near Perkasie … and the work appears to be rather dangerous,” said the Lansdale Reporter. “The other week seven men were overcome by the gas caused by trains in the tunnel and were carried out unconscious. Work was delayed for that day. Last week two men were hurt by stones falling from the roof.”
On Nov. 2, 1886 an incident at the tunnel made national headlines. “The Perkasie tunnel on the North Penn Railroad, a short distance from Perkasie Station, Bucks County, was the scene of a terrible disaster Tuesday. Four men are dead, and several others are in critical condition,” said the Hazelton Sentinel.
Report on 1886 Incident
The tunnel’s air shaft had been boarded up while 50 men were working on the tracks and a train stopped inside to unload stones. “While in the tunnel the engine exhausted its supply of steam and while the power of locomotion was being restored all the men employed in the tunnel were overcome by gas and fell over as if dead. One of them, Goap Rudenzo, an Italian, fell from a small scaffold into a pool of water not over three inches deep. His face rested in the water and when he was taken out, he was dead.” Other reports listed Rudenzo as the only fatality. The workers returned to their jobs a week later after receiving pay raises, and the railroad banned any train from stopping inside the tunnel while crews were present.
Another incident in September 1905 was the gruesome death of John Kinsey. “Fifteen men walking in thick smoke and gas on a narrow plank on the south-bound track were scattered like chaff by north bound freight engine drawing a train of extra-large engines for western roads. John Kinsey was tossed thirty feet, killed instantly and crushed to a jelly,” said the Central News. Another newspaper, the Reading Times, said Kinsey was the third person killed inside the tunnel in the past month.
Another tragedy in the tunnel
In 1907, the Central News reported what seemed to be a regular occurrence. “Last Friday, the Perkasie tunnel extracted its annual sacrifice of human life. This year the victim was Donerer Aleffing, an Italian a member of the local section crew. He was engaged last Friday morning in knocking down icicles from the ceiling of the tunnel. A train came along, presumed to be No.101, carrying Superintendents Beach and Blackstone, and he was hurled from the track, meeting instant death. … His condition was about as horrible as sight as the Coroner’s jury has ever witnessed.” The newspaper said Aleffing was disemboweled by the train.
The railroad was very aware of the danger of falling rocks inside the tunnel. Until 1948, a watchman would walk the entire length of the tunnel after each train passed through, and there was a watchman’s shack at each entrance. Three men watched the tunnel for a 24-hour period. In later years, a special tunnel car was sent through the tunnel to look for damage.
By the early 1980s, passenger train service ended in Perkasie and the tunnel is used by private freight haulers. The train tunnel has more of a recent reputation as a location of alleged paranormal activity. The tunnel’s legacy is one of a project that provided a great public benefit with much human labor in hazardous conditions.
The tunnel in 1929
