In 1837, residents of Charleston, South Carolina, and Cincinnati, Ohio, formed the Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad Company. The goal of the company was to build railroad lines that would cross mountains and provide a shorter route from Charleston to the Ohio River Valley. Railroad work in South Carolina in the 1830s and 1840s met with a variety of financial setbacks as politicians and investors lobbied their individual agendas. The original idea for laying railroads through or across the mountains was nearly abandoned, but in 1852, railroad planning was underway again.
The goal of an 1852 railroad proposal was for the Blue Ridge Railroad Company to connect South Carolina's railroads to existing Midwestern railroads by building 13 tunnels across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Three tunnels -- the Saddle Tunnel, the Middle Tunnel and Stumphouse Tunnel -- were planned for the state of South Carolina. In 1856, the London-based George Collyer Company brought in Irish workers to begin work on the 5,863-ft. Stumphouse Tunnel. These workers lived in homes on Tunnel Hill, a mining community on Stumphouse Mountain. Work on the railroad continued until 1859, and by then, only 4,363 ft. of the tunnel was complete, and the tunnel was over budget. The state of South Carolina refused to continue funding the project.
By 1859, both the tunnels through Saddle Mountain and Stumphouse Mountain were incomplete. Middle Tunnel was successfully built, but landslides on the mountain led to the tunnel's closing. When the Civil War began in 1861, Stumphouse rail work stalled altogether and could not be revived after the war ended. Three attempts were made in the years 1875, 1900 and 1940 to try to restart tunnel work, but nothing ever came to fruition. In 1951, Clemson A&M College purchased Stumphouse Tunnel to perform scientific experiments in it after a professor discovered that the tunnel's temperature and humidity made it an ideal habitat to cure the South's first bleu cheese.
In 1970, the Pendleton Historic District Commission turned Stumphouse Tunnel into a tourist attraction and park area. A rockslide, however, in the mid-1990s, closed the tunnel to the public, and the city had to perform tests on the safety of the tunnel. The tunnel was turned over to the city of Walhalla, and the city reopened the tunnel to the public in the spring of 2000. Stumphouse Tunnel runs 1,600 ft. into the mountain and is 25 ft. high by 17 ft. wide, and it is considered a historic landmark in South Carolina. The park surrounding the tunnel is open daily and year-round to visitors, except on Christmas Day.
