[This book] traces the interactions between those who worked to build the Hoosac Tunnel of Massachusetts and those who struggled mightily to hinder its construction. The driving force behind the Tunnel and a thread through the book is Alvah Crocker, paper magistrate from Fitchburg. The first to broach the idea of tunneling the Mountain is the father of American Civil Engineering, Loammi Baldwin Jr., son of the Revolutionary War hero and builder of the Middlesex Canal, Loammi Sr. There is a parade of builders: Herman Haupt, who during the Civil War earned a reputation as Lincoln's railroad man, engineers Thomas Doane and John Brooks, who pushed China merchant turned railroad man John M. Forbes' railroads into Iowa before the Civil War, and finally the Shanly brothers from Canada who achieved daylight through the Mountain. --Publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.