There's An Abandoned Train Tunnel In South Carolina That Was Never Completed And It's Eerily Fascinating

Most people don’t realize South Carolina is home to what should have been (at the time) the longest train tunnel in America. But the tunnel was never finished. The project was to build a tunnel connecting a trade route from the Mississippi to the coast. The project was to carve through more then a mile of solid rock. The project was abandoned just prior to the Civil War and never revisited for completion. Let’s take a closer look at this abandoned train tunnel in South Carolina – and even learn about another never completed tunnel that now lies under a small lake.

TripAdvisor/Sue Xu

The George Collyer Company of London brought the workers over to build the more than a mile long tunnel. Workers lived in a makeshift village on top of the tunnel. The village was called Tunnel Hill.

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All three tunnels were began in the 1850s and two of them was completed. One of them now lies at the bottom of lake in South Carolina.

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One of them, Middle Tunnel was technically completed but collapsed and is now completely sealed off. The other, however...

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It's called Crystal Lake. There are reports that the entrance to the tunnel can be seen above the waterline. Little else is known about "Saddle Tunnel" and its exact location is, as we said, unknown.

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The cheese making operation flourished for many years, until the invention of air conditioning which allowed the process to be moved to a more traditional indoor facility.

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Google/Fernando Rodriguez

Admission is free and the park is open 7 days a week from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

If you haven’t done so already, this abandoned train tunnel in South Carolina is absolutely worthy of a visit. Did you know about Stumphouse Tunnel before now – or that there are THREE tunnels here? Sound off in the comments!