Looking Back: Eaton's Tunnel

45f/12C this morning, with light rain. Gradual clearing, sunny late afternoon and 55.

Eaton's Tunnel

I have not written a post on my laptop in a long while. I use my phone these days, but after spending so much time on my laptop this past couple days, I am kind of enjoying the large screen. Five years ago I spilled white wine on here, and now most of the upper number keys don't work, so it's a bit of unhandy bcause the other symbols, like the exclamation point, number sign, etc, also are unuseable. Fortunately the number keypad still works.

Today was a laid back day. I had a nice long conversation with my son Derek, and also with my friend who is on the way home from the beach with her family. Aside from that, I cleaned and put everything back on the wall Larry painted yesterday and got the next wall ready by removing all the stuff that he might get paint on. He taped a large sheet of plastic over the TV and fireplace, as the section he is painting is the pie-shaped piece above the fireplace--the rest of the wall that is not log is taken up by the fireplace and the door. After that, I organized all my receipts for this year, set up the spreadsheet, then entered a bunch of the receipts so I feel much lighter now that I have a good start on catching up on the year. I hate this stuff, but once I get started I don't mind it quite as much as the dreaded anticipation of having to do it. Silly, but there it is.

Since I am on this computer, I thought I would look back through my thousands of files, and see what might be of interest in there. Here's a story I used to tell, one that still haunts me.

Eaton Tunnel; Or, When the Story Finds the Storyteller

The new tunnel as it was in 2022, is part of the North Bend Rail Trail, which has about 20 old tunnels along its length.

 Petroleum, West Virginia was once an oil drilling boom town with several thousand residents, a couple hotels, and all the other businesses you might expect in a thriving town. It was home to the California Hotel, a large structure built to house the oil field workers as well as the travelers who passed by on the Staunton to Parkersburg Turnpike, making their way to the Ohio River and the western oil and gold strikes. Today Petroleum is just a small rural community of scattered homes and few hints of its colorful past. When the drilling died out, the town struggled to survive; eventually the railroad was discontinued and most of the remaining jobs and people left. 

 One day my husband and I decided to re-visit Petroleum. It was late, almost dark, but on the map it didn’t look like it was more than a few miles.  The winding two-lane turned to one lane, then to gravel and finally to a rutted, muddy path with doorhandle high grass in the center, a steep droppoff on one side and a cliff on the other. We made a few wrong turns and by this time it was completely dark, the mudholes were getting bigger and deeper and the drop-off to the creek far below was ever closer as the road continued to narrow. And there was still no sign of a town or even any lights houses, or buildings.

 

As we approached another hairpin turn, we saw headlights. Another vehicle was approaching and we searched for a pull-off place. The little blue Jeep stopped when Larry rolled down his window and waved. "Are we on the road to Petroleum?"

 

"Yeah, but why do you want to go there?" Two sets of curious eyes checked out our van. "That's an awful nice vehicle to have back in here."

 

"I'm a storyteller," I explained. "I like to find places with stories, and Petroleum has such an interesting history. I especially like ghost stories and thought there might be some connected with the town’s past."

 

"Storyteller! Have you ever heard the story of Eaton's Tunnel?"

 

I had never heard of it, but it took only a few minutes for the man to give me the basics of the tale.

 

“The tunnel collapsed when it was being built, killing three men. Their bodies were never recovered. The railroad sealed up the tunnel with their bodies inside and built a new tunnel beside it. You just passed by the place,” my informant told me. “It’s just back where you started up this road. People hear things there, voices, wails, train whistles and such.”

 

It was enough to make me want to learn more. Buried bodies, ghostly wails, voices--what was the whole story behind the tunnel's haunted reputation? The next day I began my research into the story I had heard.

 

Eaton Tunnel, I learned, is Tunnel #21 on the B&O Line from Parkersburg to Grafton, WV. It was built sometime between 1867-1870. The keystone on the tunnel is dated 1867. In 1869, a young construction worker named Thomas Nashville Johnson was working at the tunnel. He was 27 years old, married to Alpha Jane Marshall, and the father of 4 children. Alpha came to Petroleum with her father who was the postmaster for the region. Prior to her marriage Alpha lived at the California House, and that is where she must have met Thomas Johnson.

 

One day there was a rock fall in the tunnel, and Thomas Johnson was killed. Alpha soon remarried, this time to a Civil War vet named Asa Jenkins. Asa was once arrested as a deserter, but whether he was actually deserting or just assigned to a sharpshooting unit is not clear. He did spend some time in prison on the charge. He may not have been the best of men as he spent time in prison for theft. Alpha divorced him in 1875.

 

As I dug deeper into Alpha’s story, it suddenly struck me that I was getting away from the story of the tunnel. Research can sometimes do that to a storyteller as one interesting trail leads to another. I wondered, were the ghostly sounds in Tunnel #21 the cries of Thomas Johnson? I continued to search for information, and soon found another tragic event at the tunnel almost 100 years after Thomas Johnson’s death.

 

By the late 1950's, railroad freight cars were getting bigger and bigger. The narrow, low tunnels on the B&O line was creating an area referred to as "The Bottleneck" by railroaders because of the difficulty of getting the larger trains through the tunnels. The B&O decided to renovate the tunnels, widening them and raising their roofs to accommodate the larger trains; this was called a "clearance" project. On June 6, 1963, Tunnel #21 collapsed during these renovations, trapping 3 men.

 

One of the men was quickly rescued and sustained only a broken ankle. Another, Arthur Boggs,  was rescued after hours under the rubble and taken to a hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where he later died of his injuries. The third worker, Harry “Buck” Nichols, could not be recovered; each time the rescue teams tried, more of the tunnel gave way. Finally, with the consent of the worker's family, the tunnel was sealed with his remains still inside. A new tunnel was constructed close by. No marker was placed at the site in remembrance of the lost worker, and today only a muddy footpath leads to the old tunnel, which has collapsed still further and is too dangerous to enter at all.

 

The collapsed tunnel entrance, as it was in 2022, the last time I was there. There is, as far as I can tell, no way to get inside even a small part of the old tunnel--and who woud want to?

Buck Nichols still rests beneath the collapsed tunnel. Most hikers trekking the North Bend Rail Trail will go through the new tunnel, unaware of the tragedies that occurred so close by. But perhaps now that his story is told, Harry “Buck” Nichols will rest in peace.

 

Sometimes we find stories. Sometimes the stories find the storyteller, in the most unexpected places.

 

http://www.newsandsentinel.com/opinion/local-columns/2015/06/train-tunnel-accident-yields-audio-evidence/

https://www.american-rails.com/eaton.html

I wrote about this story in 2012 when I first stumbled onto it, and again in 2018 when Larry and I explored it further. You can read these posts here and here.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.