In August 1926, only days after six men were killed at West Portal, the Moffat Tunnel project pressed ahead as crews crossed beneath the center of a shoulder of James Peak, recruited desperately needed miners, and began preparing the bore for rails.
Moffat Tunnel Construction Happenings from 100 Years Ago
August 1926 arrived only two days after one of the darkest moments in the construction of the Moffat Tunnel. On July 30, six men had been killed in a cave in at West Portal, where the soft and unstable ground that had plagued the project for years demonstrated its destructive potential. The work continued, as it had after other accidents, but the dead did not disappear from the newspapers simply because another month had begun. Their loss followed the project into August, appearing alongside increasingly optimistic reports that the tunnel beneath a shoulder of James Peak was nearing a breakthrough.
One of the more remarkable accounts published in early August concerned assistant superintendent Martin Green and Troy Brannigan, who crawled into the wreckage in an effort to reach Hartzel T. Thompson following the cave-in in July. During the rescue, a boulder described as “almost as big as a piano” shifted and blocked their retreat for a time. Green and Brannigan managed to bring Thompson out alive and conscious, although his injuries later proved fatal. A newspaper added that Green had once lived in Leadville, worked at the Penrose mine, and married Iona Schupp, a local woman. Such details are easily lost amid footage reports and engineering tables, but they return a human scale to the undertaking: the men beneath James Peak had come from mining communities throughout Colorado and beyond, carrying with them experience earned in other shafts, tunnels, and hard rock districts.
Within days, newspapers were carrying another kind of notice from the Moffat Tunnel: men were wanted and “For the most part the work is not dangerous.” For the first time since construction had begun, one account reported a scarcity of laborers, with a few hundred positions available for drillers, timbermen, pipe fitters, general laborers, and others. Wages ranged from $4.50 to $5.50 for an eight-hour shift, and not all of the work was underground mining; West Portal also required cement work, concrete gutters, timbering, and the innumerable supporting tasks needed to keep a project of this size advancing.
Tunnel engineers blamed the shortage of workers on a revival of mining throughout Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region. Some drillers who had worked at the tunnel through the winter returned to their own claims as those ventures became more profitable, while the demand for experienced underground labor was increasing elsewhere at precisely the same time. By August 21, more than 2,000 experienced metal miners were reportedly needed across the Rocky Mountain district, including approximately 1,000 in Colorado; 200 hard rock miners were wanted specifically at the Moffat Tunnel. To maintain the drilling force, workers were recruited from the zinc mining districts of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, and approximately fifty hard rock drillers from around Joplin, Missouri, were employed on the tunnel. Engineers emphasized that Colorado miners were being given preference and noted that some of the Joplin men were, in a sense, returning rather than arriving for the first time, having previously worked in Colorado before departing during the mining slump. Despite the scramble for manpower, engineers maintained that the shortage had not yet slowed construction.
Construction, in fact, was advancing into territory that only months earlier had remained somewhere ahead in the darkness. On August 1, drillers and muckers working from East Portal passed the halfway point of the pioneer (water) tunnel and continued west beneath James Peak. A contemporary newspaper described them as working with “the weight of the snow-capped summit hanging over their heads,” which may sound like journalistic flourish until one considers the geography involved: thousands of feet of mountain separated those men from daylight, while high above, the Moffat Road climbed over Rollins Pass and carried trains across the Continental Divide in the very manner this tunnel was intended to make obsolete.
Newspapers placed the halfway point at 16,192 feet from East Portal; Hitchcock & Tinkler later recorded it as 16,190 feet. Two feet is an interesting archival discrepancy, but across more than six miles of tunnel it is not a consequential one. The important development was that the eastern crew had crossed beneath the center of James Peak while the western crew remained well behind, having spent much of the project fighting geology far less cooperative than that encountered from the east.
The Tunnel Commission’s August 15 report provides the most useful single snapshot of the month. The water tunnel stood at 90.3 percent complete, the railroad headings at 86.5 percent, and the railroad tunnel enlarged to full size at 68.5 percent. Those three percentages deserve to remain together because they prevent the first number from telling too cheerful a story. More than 90 percent of the smaller pioneer bore had been driven, but the tunnel that would actually carry trains still required a considerable amount of enlargement, lining, drainage, ballast, track, and other work.
West Portal continued to furnish less amusing reminders about the difference between plans drawn on paper and conditions underground. The August 15 report stated that granite had been encountered on the western side for the first time, an encouraging development after the long battle with soft ground. Yet reports later in the month still complained of difficult formations, including one headline that summarized the matter efficiently: “MOFFAT TUNNEL PROGRESS SLOW IN SOFT ROCK.” Whatever optimism the appearance of granite created, James Peak had apparently not agreed to become uniformly cooperative.
Nevertheless, estimates for holing through became increasingly bold. One report suggested the water tunnel might connect by November 1; by August 19, engineers were predicting that the Moffat Tunnel would be “through” by January 1 if the current rate continued. The wording was more precise than it may appear today, because “through” did not mean complete. Connecting the pioneer headings would establish a continuous underground passage through James Peak, but months of work would remain before trains could use the railroad bore. The contract itself anticipated additional time for installations after breakthrough. Both forecasts proved optimistic. The pioneer tunnel would finally be holed through on February 18, 1927. The shifting predictions are not especially surprising when viewed against the history of West Portal, where footage already excavated could be measured to the inch while the character of the rock still ahead remained hidden. A tunnel schedule was, in that sense, partly an engineering calculation and partly an educated wager against unknowable geology.
While crews continued drilling toward one another, other portions of the project were beginning to look less like excavation and more like a railroad. At West Portal, the commission awarded Ed H. Honnen of Colorado Springs a contract to construct approximately two miles of roadbed connecting the existing Moffat Road with the tunnel. The new alignment would leave the railroad near the Victory Highway, descend toward the portal on an easier grade, and cross both the Fraser River and the highway before reaching the entrance. A local newspaper reduced this substantial undertaking to a wonderfully ordinary observation: six trucks passed through town on a Sunday bound for West Portal, where they would work on the railroad connection near Vasquez. Those trucks were helping construct the route that would eventually make the rails over Rollins Pass unnecessary. For more than two decades, locomotives had strained up, over, and down the Continental Divide because David Moffat’s intended tunnel did not exist. Now the railroad approaching West Portal was being built to turn the old Hill Route from necessity into history.
Inside East Portal, the transition was even more visible. Late in August, blasting began in preparation for laying rails, and crews started placing ballast on the roadbed. Hitchcock & Tinkler later recorded that the East Portal shovel was taken from bench excavation on August 24 and reassigned to ballasting work before eventually returning to excavation. After years devoted principally to removing James Peak one bucket, blast, and muck car at a time, the crews were beginning to put railroad infrastructure back into the space they had created. Contemporary reports expected track throughout the eastern portion to be laid by the time the pioneer tunnel holed through in early winter, another schedule that would prove too optimistic. Still, the prediction captures a genuine change in the project. Discussion was beginning to move beyond how quickly men could drill through the mountain and toward the question everyone ultimately cared about: when could a train pass through it?
Colorado itself was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary of statehood that August, and the unfinished tunnel became part of the occasion. On August 3, President Calvin Coolidge spoke by radio about the state and the extraordinary construction problems presented by the Rocky Mountains, eventually singling out the work beneath James Peak: “The Moffat Tunnel, nearing completion, is a marvel of engineering achievement.” Only days removed from the West Portal deaths, the description carried more weight than the usual ceremonial compliment. The tunnel was unquestionably an engineering marvel, but marvels are easier to admire from a distance. Inside the project were timber sets bowed by pressure, men crawling beneath collapsed rock, recruitment notices asking for hundreds of workers, and families receiving news that someone would not be coming home.
Erskine R. Myer, attorney for the Moffat Tunnel Commission, addressed the fatalities during a Lions Club luncheon and reportedly described the deaths as one of the unavoidable tolls of industry, while maintaining that every precaution known to science and engineering had been taken. As the commission’s attorney, Myer was hardly a disinterested investigator, and his remarks are best understood as part of the contemporary public defense of the project rather than as the final word on its safety. They nevertheless reveal how quickly sacrifice and progress were being placed within the same narrative.
By the closing days of August, fewer than 3,000 feet remained between the pioneer headings. That figure is worth mentioning once because it conveys how tantalizingly close the crews had come: less than the distance many people walk without thinking much about it, yet still more than half a mile of unseen rock requiring drilling, blasting, timbering where necessary, mucking, ventilation, surveying, and a good deal of faith that conditions ahead would remain manageable.
August 1926 was therefore a month when several versions of the Moffat Tunnel existed at once. At West Portal, men were still wrestling with difficult ground only days after a fatal cave in. Elsewhere, recruiters were searching across several states for enough experienced miners to maintain the workforce. Beneath the eastern side of James Peak, crews had already crossed the midpoint and were preparing completed portions of the railroad bore for ballast and track. Above ground, a new railroad connection was being pushed toward West Portal, quietly beginning the process that would eventually remove regular trains from Rollins Pass. The project was no longer difficult to imagine as a finished railroad; pieces of that future were becoming visible on both sides of the mountain. Yet the remaining work continued to resist the tidy calendars printed in newspapers, and the deaths of July 30 were too recent to allow August’s progress reports to read only as celebration. The men beneath James Peak were close, but close underground still meant drilling into rock no one had yet seen.
B. Travis Wright, MPS | Preserve Rollins Pass | August 29, 2026
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