Throwback Thursday

Have you ever looked at a map of Rocky Mountain National Park and wondered what the Alva B Adams Tunnel was all about? The tunnel appears as a dotted line, crossing through the heart of the park from Grand Lake to Estes Park. It was built in order to transport water from Grand Lake to farmers on the eastern plains of Colorado. This 13.1-mile tunnel is truly a marvel of engineering – especially when you consider there was no such thing as GPS or laser technology in 1944. Workers began drilling on both sides of the Continental Divide in 1940. The 9.75-foot diameter tunnel was completed on June 10, 1944 when workers met at the halfway point, roughly 3800 feet below the surface of the mountain peaks. Starting from both sides of the Continental Divide, the engineers were only 7/16s of an inch off alignment when they finally met in the middle!



Below is a documentary film on the construction of the Tunnel, produced in 1943 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation:











Jeff

HikingintheSmokys.com