A Brief History
On September 5, 1980, the Gotthard Road Tunnel from Uri Canton to Airolo in Switzerland opened for travel, at the time the longest highway tunnel in the world at 10.5 miles long. Today, we look at some other real and fictional tunnels:
Digging Deeper
The Channel Tunnel, or, “Chunnel,” connecting France and England with an under the sea section of 23.5 of its 31 mile length.
The Time Tunnel, a TV show from 1966 to 1967, featuring two lost time travelers going from one historical adventure to another.
The Delaware Aqueduct, the longest tunnel in the world, is located in New York State, running 85.1 miles to carry water to New York City.
The Tunnel of Love, an amusement park ride at Palisades Park, New Jersey, a 1958 film, a “tree tunnel” in Ukraine, and an album by Bruce Springsteen.
The “Great Escape” tunnels, which 76 RAF airmen escaped from a POW camp in 1944. The movie premiered in 1963.
Question for students (and subscribers): What is your favorite tunnel? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Garguilo, Vince. Palisades Amusement Park: A Century of Fond Memories. Rutgers University Press, 1995.
Light, Kate. 20 Fun Facts About Famous Tunnels. Gareth Stevens Pub, 2019.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Grzegorz Święch of the entrance to the St. Gotthard Tunnel (Switzerland) from the south side (Airolo), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
