Hidden treasures: Tunnel Hill tunnel

Mitch Talley, Whitfield County director of communications

Editor’s note: During the coming weeks, The Daily Citizen will feature a series of articles aimed at letting local residents and tourists know more about the many historic attractions in Dalton and Whitfield County.

Tunnel Hill tunnel

Built to connect the Port of Augusta to the Tennessee River Valley, the tunnel through the Chetoogeta Mountain was to be part of the first railroad across the Appalachian Mountains, and open trade between the eastern coast region and the upper Midwest. Construction began on the tunnel in 1848, during which the city of Tunnel Hill sprang up from people moving here to supply accommodations to the railway workers. The tunnel, which spans 1,477 feet, was dug through the base of the mountain. On May 9, 1850, the first Western & Atlantic train passed through the mountain tunnel, and the new town of Atlanta became one of the railway’s major hubs.

These days, it’s hard to imagine Tunnel Hill without its namesake tunnel.

But City Manager Blake Griffin, who grew up in the town in the 1960s, remembers a time when the tunnel was overgrown with weeds and occupied by snakes and other wild animals, long abandoned by rail traffic.

“I can’t remember it being in anything but disrepair since I was a kid,” says Griffin. “The new tunnel had been built in 1928, and the old tunnel had just been sitting there since then for years. As a rite of passage around here, you had to walk through the old tunnel once in your life — and to do that, you had to wear knee-high boots because of all the mud. It was just a swampland in there.”

Thanks to a cooperative effort between government and private citizens and organizations in the 1990s, however, today the original tunnel — completed in 1850 — has been restored and looks much the way it did when it played a key role in the War Between the States in the 1860s.

Local businessman Kenneth Holcomb and his wife, Barbara, got the ball rolling in the 1990s when they purchased the property and helped start the Tunnel Hill Historic Foundation to try and raise funds to restore the tunnel. Then, through Whitfield County government, the foundation received a $1.5 million federal grant, and county crews led by Gary Brown completed the work in 2000.

“It’s amazing what they did with it,” Griffin said. “It was just an ugly piece of real estate. You wouldn’t have even known the original rock walls leading into the tunnel were there — they were completely covered with weeds. I remember when I was a kid, back in the ‘60s, if you got 10 feet inside that hole, that was about as far as you could go without having your daddy pick you up and carry you through.”

Thanks to those collaborative efforts, the area now includes the restored tunnel, a Heritage Center, three parking lots, the antebellum Clisby Austin House, walking trails, a large pasture where re-enactors meet each year, and an unrestored depot recently secured by the city.

“Tunnel Hill was first chartered in 1849 as Tunnelsville,” Griffin said recently, peering into the historic tunnel. “This is our namesake right here; that’s why it’s important to the people around here.”

That, and the role it played in the Civil War.

Resort area

“The Clisby Austin House was a resort back before the war,” Griffin said. “When it was built, it was the place where people would come and stay for long periods of time as a resort. Then during the Civil War, of course, it was occupied by both the North and South soldiers.”

While there was no actual Battle of Tunnel Hill, there were many skirmishes fought there “because this land was occupied for most of the entire war because of its location between Dalton and Ringgold,” Griffin said.

“Particularly when the Battle of Chattanooga and Chickamauga was fought, this was headquarters for the South for much of that period, especially after they fell back from Chickamauga. Maybe I shouldn’t say headquarters — it was occupied heavily — headquarters were primarily in Dalton where Gen. (Joseph E.) Johnston was. Gen. (William) Sherman stayed here himself, and once Johnston was relieved, John Bell Hood stayed here, too. They even say his leg is buried here.”

Team approach

Nearly 150 years later, it’s taking a team effort to preserve the site for future generations.

Whitfield County, Tunnel Hill and the Dalton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau have joined forces to keep the area in good shape for visitors. In fact, the Heritage Center is the only museum in the county that is open on a daily basis — Monday through Saturday (and sometimes Sunday afternoons).

But community organizations also play a key role.

“We have to let the community get involved to keep it looking good because all we can do with our little budget is mow it, cut back the kudzu …” Griffin said.

During the past few years, two Scouts — Daniel Albertson and Travis Gordon — completed landscaping projects at the Heritage Center and the tunnel parking lot to earn their Eagle ranks, and a day care center and its children also completed a landscaping project near the tunnel.

The Holcombs left the property, some 80 acres, to the county with the stipulation that the large pasture across from the Heritage Center remain a green park.

“Mr. Holcomb said he didn’t want motor homes there,” Griffin explained. “He wanted this to be a place where Boy Scouts could camp, wanted it to be where walkers could walk — basically non-motorized as much as possible, a very green space.”

The county has already used a grant to build walking paths through the site, and two bridges will be added soon to link the trails together.

“There’s several options to walk here,” Griffin said, pointing out several. “You can walk straight down this tree line, you can cross the road, you can go around the field down there, you can cut up through the woods there, you can cut up through the woods here — just several options.”

He’s glad the city, county and volunteers took up the challenge to restore the tunnel a decade ago, but what if they had not?

“Well, our namesake would be covered with vines, falling in, don’t know if the railroad might have just tried to cave the hole in,” Griffin said. “We certainly wouldn’t have a museum, wouldn’t have a need for a museum. Wouldn’t have a need for a re-enactment. The re-enactment is there to help fund the museum and historic sites. We would be nowhere. It all is because of that tunnel. Without that tunnel, you don’t have Tunnel Hill, you don’t have Tunnelsville. We were only here in the first place because of that hole in the ground. We’d lose our identity.”

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