In May 1926, the Moffat Tunnel faced bad ground, rising costs, public doubt, and one patented Colorado invention that helped keep the work moving beneath James Peak.
Moffat Tunnel Construction Happenings from 100 Years Ago
Editor’s Note: May 1926 was not a quiet chapter in the Moffat Tunnel saga. Major developments arrived one after another, making this a denser installment than usual, but history does not always arrive in neat portions. June 1926, by contrast, would prove far quieter: the proverbial calm before July’s heartbreaking storm.
May 1926 brought no easy miles beneath the shoulder James Peak. At East Portal, water still dogged the crews, even as the flow slowly began to diminish. At West Portal, the mountain pressed hard enough to crush timber and delay progress foot by foot. In Denver, the same tunnel that promised a shorter route through the Rockies had become a test of money, patience, and public trust. The month opened with a sentence that captured the whole enterprise in miniature: “Both portal headings are in bad ground and progress continues slow, although the water flow at East Portal is slowly diminishing.” That was May 12. It was not triumph, but it was not defeat either. The water was easing. The work continued. The mountain, stubborn as ever, had not yet given permission for optimism.
Then came a better sign. After months of soft rock and excessive water, workers at the East Portal pushed into dry, hard rock again. Twenty-four feet were gained in a single day. In tunnel work, distance was morale, and twenty-four feet could sound like a drumbeat after months of mud, pressure, and pumping. The water at the East Portal had been especially difficult because the tunnel, from that side, had passed the apex and was being driven on a downgrade. Gravity was no friend. Every inflow wanted to follow the men and impede their progress.
The Associated Press put it plainly from Denver on May 18: “After being delayed several months, by soft rock and excessive water flows, workmen at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel under James Peak, on the Continental Divide, today struck hard rock. Engineers now expect to make steady progress and have the tunnel completed this summer. Workers bored twenty-four feet today.”
But the story of the Moffat Tunnel isn’t only about East Portal. “Difficult conditions still prevail at the West Portal, however, necessitating the timbering of every foot.” That “however” was doing heavy work. On the west side, the ground still crushed timbers, slowed crews, and mocked estimates. The headings of the two portals were reported to be about 4,600 feet apart, close enough to feel the dream becoming real, yet still far enough for the mountain to demand more money, more steel, more timber, and more nerve.
This is where George Lewis’ cantilever beam belongs in the story. We first spoke of this engineering marvel in our April 1925 article. The machine was not a decorative engineering footnote. It was born from a practical crisis at the West Portal, where earlier methods for supporting the roof during bench* excavation had failed to provide the control needed in soft ground. The article “Speeding Up The Moffat Tunnel” described the device as a new method of excavation developed for “the uncertain character of the material and the tendency of the side walls to move in on the tunnel during construction.” The headline gave it the flourish it deserved: “New Cantilever Beam Cuts Time in Half, Saves Labor Costs, and Prevents Disastrous Slides.”
*In tunnel work, a bench is not a seat or a worktable. It is the lower mass of rock left in place after the upper portion of the tunnel, or heading, has been driven forward. Crews could advance the smaller upper opening first, then later drill, blast, and remove the bench beneath it to bring the tunnel down to its full railroad height.
On May 4, 1926, the United States Patent Office granted George Lewis of Denver patent No. 1,583,075 for “Method and Apparatus for Supporting Timbering in Tunnels.” The application had been filed June 5, 1925, and the patent record identifies Lewis as assignor of one-half to Peter Seerie. That detail gives the May 1926 story an important anchor: while newspapers were reporting bad ground, water, bonds, criticism, and worry, the federal patent record was recognizing a Colorado tunnel engineer’s solution to one of the very problems threatening the project’s completion.
Lewis’ patent explained the problem with elegant bluntness. In soft ground, the roof and walls of a tunnel had to be held in place by heavy timbers. Traditional temporary plumb posts interfered with the use of a steam shovel and increased labor. His object was “to produce a method of tunneling that shall greatly decrease the labor cost and an apparatus by means of which the method may be carried out.” The method supported the wall plates and roof ribs from the upper surface of the bench until the permanent plumb posts could be installed, allowing a steam shovel to remove muck and helping “prevent the sagging of the roof ribs.”
The contemporary cantilever-beam article described the working device as two parallel plate girders, three and one-half feet deep and 60 feet long, spaced six feet apart and tied together with cross frames and bracing. The patent described the apparatus in part as two forty-eight-inch I-beam girders, also 60 feet long, cross-braced on six-foot centers. The difference in description may reflect source language, iteration, or the distinction between public engineering article and patent specification. The essential point is the same: the beam carried the wall plates and roof timbering from above while men removed the bench below. It bought working room inside bad ground.
Under the older I-beam system, crews considered it unsafe to remove more than six feet of bench at one operation. With the cantilever beam, seventeen feet could be “shot,” mucked, and supported in one cycle. The time required for one cycle fell from twenty-four hours to eighteen, and less as the gangs gained experience. The article estimated that, by completion, the device would save the Tunnel Commission “over 2,500,000 dollars in labor costs alone.” That is the kind of figure that gets printed in newspapers. The more important point was underground. The beam held back danger long enough for men to work. It turned improvisation into method.
The scale of the work remained enormous. Estimates placed total rock excavation at 522,500 cubic yards. Men worked eight-hour shifts day and night. Electricity for lighting and power came from a station on South Boulder Creek. Direct current of 250 volts drove mucking machines, electric locomotives, blowers, and other equipment. Compressed air traveled through an eight-inch line in the water tunnel, then through smaller pipes into the crosscuts. Fresh air was crucial, and each portal had a ventilating plant capable of delivering about 25,000 cubic feet of fresh air per minute to the headings.
The tunnel was an enterprise, but it was also two towns, a workplace, and a culture. Newspaper advertisements still called for labor in blunt terms: “MUCKERS WANTED: For Moffat Tunnel, $3.25 per day of 8 hours, room and board included, 7 days per week. Apply room 203 Club bldg., 1731 Arapahoe.”
There were ceremonies too. F.C. Hitchcock and Stanley Watt went to East Portal to attend a B. P. O. E. initiation ceremony, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks bringing fraternal life into a construction camp nestled into the far west end of the Tolland Valley. Baseball was in the air as well. On May 9, the Rocky Mountain News reported: “Teams are being organized at Woods Lumber camp, West Portal, Tabernash, and Granby. Many fast Denver players will play on the clubs.” Those details reminds us that the men who drilled, mucked, timbered, pumped, and blasted also needed something beyond rock and wages. They needed teams. They needed a Saturday night. They needed a reason to look up from the work.
Even children were building the tunnel in miniature. The Steamboat Pilot noted on May 19 that a model Moffat Tunnel had been built on a table in a sixth-grade room. There were “the portals, East and West, with the buildings, the entrance to the tunnel, the tracks, the cars and the steam shovel and every detail of the camps.” James Peak rose above it, snowcapped, with timberline, dense green forest at the base, and even a fire-swept area in view. The tunnel had become more than infrastructure. It had entered the imagination of Colorado’s classrooms and inspired the next generation.
The first train through was still estimated for July 21, 1927. That date would not hold, but in May 1926 it still offered the public something to grip. A finish line. A promise… and those promises were being tested. More bonds would be needed to complete the Moffat Tunnel.
One article wrote that the Moffat Tunnel Commission was having “a bushel of trouble with the job of putting the big hole through James Peak.” The west side had bad ground that crushed heavy timbers. The east side had water. Then the writer added a wicked twist: “Then, besides all this, a heavy flow of gas has been encountered.” This gas, however, was “struck many miles from the actual workings—in fact it eminates from the Champa Street Temple of Injustice.” The charge was that public criticism was being used “to lead people to believe that the members of the Commission are a bunch of incompetents and grafters.” The humor was sharp because the stakes were serious. The tunnel had become a test of public trust.
The critics had their own language. One editorial declared: “SLOWLY, but surely, Denver is waking up to the fact that it has a double-barreled white elephant on its hands in the Moffat Tunnel.” It argued that the estimated cost was about twice what had been represented, predicted a final cost of $20,000,000, and concluded that the tunnel might be worth its cost only if it taught voters to “QUIT VOTING BONDS.” That quote shows that skepticism was not marginal. The opposition saw the project as a financial trap, a public-works warning, and a burden Denver had brought upon itself. The argument was harsh, but it asked a fair question: what happens when a civic dream costs far more than promised?
Other voices answered just as forcefully. One editorial defended the additional $3,500,000 bond issue with practical restraint: “It was necessary to raise it and it was raised and the money is in the bank.” The commissioners, it argued, had been appointed to perform “a certain task, piercing a great mountain,” and no one could know exactly what kind of material lay inside. The real failure would have been to spend the existing money and leave the work unfinished.
Another defended the secrecy of the financing with almost cheerful combativeness. The Denver Post had accused the commission of raising money “secretly.” The reply: the commissioners should be credited for having “enough business acumen not to have announced to the Denver Post what its plans were.” Mr. Bonfils had reportedly said, “You’ll never get another dime.” The editorial answered with certainty: “the tunnel must be completed—and it will be completed.”
The financial facts were formidable. The new loan of $3,500,000 brought total obligations of the Moffat Tunnel District to $12,720,000. The lender was R. M. Grant & Co. of New York, which had also handled the original $6,720,000 bond issue and the second supplemental issue of $2,500,000. The commission’s formal statement placed the interest rate at 5¼ percent, with bonds to be retired in ten equal annual installments beginning January 1, 1947, and ending January 1, 1956. The legality of the issue was reportedly approved by Storey, Thorndyke and Ware of Boston, and James H. Pershing of Denver.
The raw clippings do not entirely agree on every financial detail. One article printed the new loan at 5½ percent, and an Associated Press item gave the principal retirement period as 1947 to 1965. Because the commission statement and other fuller accounts give 5¼ percent and 1947 to 1956, those are the figures used here, with the newspaper discrepancies best treated as part of the period record rather than silently harmonized.
W. N. W. Blayney, one of the commissioners, framed the matter as duty rather than choice. “Under the Moffat Tunnel law it was made mandatory on the Moffat Tunnel Commission to build the Moffat Tunnel,” he said. “The tunnel is going to be built.” He went further: “Even if we were of a mind, which we are not, to let the project drop, to let the $10,000,000 which has been invested in it go—the cost to be borne by the people of the Moffat Tunnel district without a return on the investment—we could not. At any time any taxpayer could mandamus us to proceed if we stopped.” The commission was not just fighting geology. It was bound by law, debt, expectation, and the fear of wasting what had already been spent. Blayney called it plainly: “We would have liked to put through the tunnel without raising money; would have lived to have built it for nothing, but it is facts we are facing.”
Blayney also explained how the burden was expected to be divided. The Denver & Salt Lake railroad had contracted to rent the railroad bore at an amount sufficient to pay interest on and retire two-thirds of the two previous bond issues, plus a possible additional $1,000,000 after those issues were paid. The remainder would depend on water tunnel rentals, with any balance falling to taxpayers of the Moffat Tunnel District, of which Denver constituted 88 percent. The more the city paid for water-tunnel rental, the smaller the amount to be raised by direct taxation.
At the same time, the railroad that would use the tunnel was being reorganized. The way was being cleared for settlement of claims totaling $355,700 against the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad, then in receivership. After foreclosure and auction, the reorganized company would carry nearly the same name, except “Railroad” would become “Railway.” The plan meant to put the Moffat road on its feet in time to use the tunnel.
Formal application was made to the Interstate Commerce Commission for authority to issue the securities needed for reorganization: $2,500,000 in first mortgage 6 percent gold bonds, $11,000,000 in income mortgage bonds with interest limited to 6 percent, and 50,000 shares of no-par common stock. The $2,500,000 first mortgage bonds were to bring “new money” into the system. Oil discoveries in Routt and Moffat counties had improved revenue, with more than 1,000 tank cars, more than half of Colorado’s entire oil production, reportedly handled each month. That increase helped hasten the reorganization.
The tunnel’s future depended on use. It had to be finished, leased, traveled, and paid for. Without railroad rental and water-bore revenue, the burden would remain with taxpayers.
The water bore became a second battleground. “WATER AND THE TUNNEL,” a letter to the Rocky Mountain News, opened with a striking comparison: “The development of propaganda, like that of tear gas, is one of the results of the world war. It is a very powerful weapon when unscrupulously used. Public opinion is unthinking and easily swayed.”
The writer argued that Denver had once been overwhelmingly enthusiastic, but public opinion had shifted because of two causes: the increased cost and the commission’s refusal to lease the water privilege to a private corporation. The letter then widened the map. Transcontinental railroads opposed a shorter route to Salt Lake City. Eastern slope coal interests disliked the prospect of western slope coal reaching their markets. California water interests, according to the writer, were prepared to fight diversion from the western to the eastern slope. Hearst newspapers entered the story. So did the Fraser River company.
These claims should be read as a polemical letter, not neutral fact. Still, they show how widely the tunnel’s meaning had spread. By May 1926, the project was no longer only about a railroad bore through James Peak. It was about western slope coal, Front Range water, Denver taxation, California anxiety, newspaper power, and whether a public improvement district could carry an undertaking whose geology refused to cooperate.
The letter’s geology was blunt: “Unfortunately, instead of solid granite the interior of James Peak seems to be made up largely of very soft, disintegrated rock and mud, accompanied by a vast volume of water running at times as high as 3,000 gallons per minute.” Engineers had expected 2,000 feet of soft ground; the writer had been told timbering would be needed for more than 18,000 feet. The criticism of the commissioners was almost sympathetic: “My only criticism of these gentlemen is that they were silly enough to take on the thankless task with the vast uncertainties connected with any project of this character.”
Another editorial, “Complete the Tunnel,” took the long view. “Hindsight is not hard to acquire; even a fool may have it.” If the commission had possessed “X-ray penetration to look into the heart of the Divide,” it would have adjusted. But it did not. No one did. The editorial accepted that the total cost, including the water bore, would be about double the original estimates, then asked the essential question: stop and lose the $9,000,000 already expended, or go ahead? Its answer was direct: “The tunnel must be completed without delay.” The article also made a remarkable prediction about the water bore, calling it something that “some day will be more valuable to this city than the whole cost of the twin-tunnel.” The Moffat Tunnel was sold to the public as a railroad project, but its water function was already understood as a long-range municipal asset.
By late May, John Vipond Davies, a consulting engineer with major tunnel experience, arrived with reassurance. “The Moffat Tunnel, as far as the railroad tunnel is concerned, will be finished almost exactly on the time planned, despite the fact that the east and west headings may not be united until possibly two months later than the time set,” he said. Davies’ calm was nearly theatrical. He had spent one day at each portal and returned to the Brown Palace Hotel, where he said the work was “entirely satisfactory and perfectly normal.” The water, he said, was nothing unusual. “Where they found a flow of from 1,000 to 5,000 gallons a minute, we ran into 10,000 gallons a minute in the Astoria tunnel. So you can see we were worse off than they were here.” He explained that crews had gone through the fissure that brought water down from the glacial moraine above, and that they had hit the best rock yet encountered. The rock was worse than expected, but that was tunnel work: “a man drilling a tunnel never knows from one day to the next just what kind of rock he is going to strike. That’s one thing which makes it interesting.”
Davies described a belt of about 150 feet of mica schist full of water. Native timbers had been crushed. Twelve-inch Oregon fir also failed. Larger Oregon fir, protected by steel caps, was proving satisfactory. His final message was steady: “There is nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. The conditions encountered have been normal, the work is satisfactory, and the completed project will be ready just about on time.”
Yet May also carried warnings that could not be brushed aside. On May 3, the Boulder Daily Camera reported that E. H. Brines and his brother Charles were burned when lightning exploded a transformer in the hydraulic plant of the Public Service Company in Boulder Canyon. Burning oil and smoke filled the room. The transformer was ruined, insulators were broken, and the interior had to be repainted. The outage affected the mountain district, and “The Moffat Tunnel construction was slowed up for the period of outage.”
The tunnel depended on men, machines, electricity, air, timber, rails, pumps, and weather. A lightning strike miles away could slow the work beneath the Divide. Everything was connected.
Then came the month’s most sobering warning, from The Holy Cross Trail on May 8, addressed “To Governor Morley.” The letter opened without ceremony: “We have a job for our mine inspector that should be attended to at once. Or one of these fine days we will be shocked by reading of a shift of miners being caught like rats in a trap. It is at the Moffat Tunnel.” By July, those words would read less like a warning and more like a prophecy. In the letter, the concern focused on escape. At the East Portal, the pilot tunnel and railroad tunnel were in about the same distance, with crosscuts every few hundred feet. At the West Portal, the pilot tunnel extended past a crosscut by several thousand feet through heavy ground. The writer feared that a cave-in could trap a shift at the breast “with no means of escape,” hold water back, and drown the men. The comparison to Red Cliff was pointed: “Here in Red Cliff a mine inspector required one of our companies to dig an extra man hole, for only 240 feet of an incline.”
The letter closed with civic insistence: “We are just telling you this Governor. As you are the chief executive of the State. And a part of your business to see that miners lives are duly safeguarded by your understudies the mine inspectors.”
Lewis’ invention reduced danger, but it did not erase risk. Confidence from consulting engineers, financial resolve from commissioners, and new steel inside the mountain did not change the fact that men were still entering headings where water, pressure, and collapse could outrun every plan.
May 1926 was not one story. It was a full stack of them. East Portal found hard rock. West Portal still squeezed timber and patience. George Lewis’ patented method and apparatus continued to give the builders a way to hold the mountain open while the bench came out below. Muckers were wanted. Elks gathered. Baseball teams formed. A sixth-grade model brought James Peak into a classroom. A transformer exploded. The railroad reorganized. Bonds were sold. Water politics flared. Skeptics called the tunnel a white elephant. Supporters answered that abandonment would waste everything already invested. Engineers smiled and called the chaos normal.
The mountain kept its own ledger.
A century later, that ledger remains useful. It reminds us that great public works are rarely clean stories of progress. They are arguments with geology, finance, politics, technology, labor, and public trust. The Moffat Tunnel survived May 1926 because its builders, commissioners, critics, and defenders all understood the same uncomfortable truth from different angles: once Colorado had gone this deep into the Divide, failure would cost more than completion. And somewhere beneath James Peak, amid water, timber, steel, and the breath of ventilating fans, the men kept going.
B. Travis Wright, MPS | Preserve Rollins Pass | May 17, 2026
Want to uncover more incredible Moffat Tunnel stories? Our blog is filled with deeper dives into its history, untold tales, and connections to Rollins Pass. Explore more and journey through time with us!
The primary purpose of our work is to inform the public.
