Tunnel to Nowhere

At the crest of a gravel path in a sylvan corner of Oconee County, 7 miles northeast of Walhalla, South Carolina, a 1,617-foot-long tunnel cuts through the blue granite of Stumphouse Mountain and abruptly dead ends at a bare rock wall. The curious story of this tunnel and why it was never finished begins nearly 200 years ago.

In the 1830s, South Carolina statesman John C. Calhoun proposed that a rail line be built from Anderson, South Carolina, to Knoxville, Tennessee. He and others envisioned a direct route west from Charleston to foster trade between South Carolina and the Ohio Valley. Calhoun even trekked through the Blue Ridge Mountains on foot in search of a “Carolina Gap” through which to run the railroad.

Despite his early endeavors to win support for the project, the charter for the Blue Ridge Rail Road was not issued until 1852 — two years after Calhoun’s death. It was slated to run 195 miles over and through the mountains, via a series of tunnels. “At the time,” says Jennifer Moss, Assistant Curator/Education Specialist for the Oconee Heritage Center in Walhalla, “this was the largest construction project that the State of South Carolina had ever attempted.”

The largest of the three tunnels planned in Oconee County, the tunnel through Stumphouse Mountain, was designed to be 5,682 feet long, with four shafts reaching from the top of the mountain down into the tunnel.

Construction began in 1853. The 500 men who labored on the tunnel were primarily Irish immigrants who established a settlement dubbed Tunnel Hill above the construction site. Once “notable for its seclusion and wildness,” as one 19th-century visitor described the area, the workers’ village was subjected to smoke from steam engines, soot from the blacksmiths’ furnaces, and constant noise from men blasting through the rock at all hours. For explosives, they used black powder manufactured from potash and charcoal at the mill at the foot of nearby Issaqueena Falls.

To create the tunnel, a “heading” team drilled clusters of horizontal “shot holes” along what would be the top of the structure. Miners drilled the holes three-feet deep using a steel drill that was struck alternately by two men, each wielding an 8-pound sledge hammer. The agonizingly slow process required three hours to drill one hole, into which the men inserted explosive charges and fuses. “Benching” teams followed, drilling holes vertically into the floor of the mountain. These would likewise be set with black-powder charges, extending the opening downward in a stair-step effect. It was extremely hazardous work, for which the workers were paid a paltry wage of $1.19 to $1.68 per day.

Plagued by shady contractors and lack of funding, the project finally came to a halt with the first volleys of the Civil War in 1860. None of the three tunnels in Oconee County were ever completed, and the Blue Ridge Rail Road ultimately extended only as far as Walhalla. It was rumored that deserters from both sides hid out in Stumphouse Tunnel during the war.

In 1951, Clemson University bought the tunnel, recognizing its constant temperature of 58 degrees and 90 percent humidity as ideal conditions in which to age Clemson blue cheese. More than 50 years later, in 2007, a coalition of local conservation groups raised money to preserve the property, which was being threatened with residential development. Their efforts succeeded, and Stumphouse Tunnel and Issaqueena Falls are now conservancy properties managed by the City of Walhalla.

Today the ill-fated tunnel welcomes visitors to walk its dark length and ponder the marvel of its engineering. In winter, water drips from the shaft above; in spring, mountain laurel frames the entrance. In all seasons, Stumphouse Tunnel endures as an eerie monument to its builders.

Issaqueena Falls

Follow the path down the hill from the tunnel and in a short distance, you’ll come to the lookout for Issaqueena Falls. The most accessible waterfall in Oconee County, this frothy 100-foot-high chute is named for a Creek Indian maiden.

As the legend goes, Issaqueena fell in love with Allan Francis, a white trader. Before she could marry him, however, she was captured by the Cherokee. One day, she overheard the Cherokee planning a surprise attack on the trading post where her lover was living, nearly 100 miles to the south. In a valiant effort to warn him, she escaped the Cherokee camp on horseback and rode to save him. It is said that she named several geographical points (including the towns of Six Mile and Ninety Six, the terminus of her route) along the way, according to their distance from the Cherokee village.

Thanks to Issaqueena, the colonists thwarted the Cherokee attack, and she and Francis were married. The couple fled north to Stumphouse Mountain, where they hid from the furious Cherokee in a hollowed-out tree, or stump house. Eventually, several warriors caught up with Issaqueena, who ran to a nearby waterfall — now Issaqueena Falls — and threw herself into the cascading water. The Cherokee assumed she must be dead and abandoned their quest. Issaqueena, however, had jumped only to the first tier of the falls, where she hid behind the veil of water. As the romanticized story goes, the couple eventually moved to Alabama where they lived out their lives in peace.