Month: February 2018

North Adams exists as a hub of activity, and commonly is called a “drive-through town.” Even the trains are driving from one place to another, trying to get to somewhere else, never stopping for long.

Much of North Adams is historic, run down, falling apart or somehow being “reclaimed by nature” if you prefer to romanticise it in that way. Old Victorians, falling apart, or apartment buildings marked with signs that say it is no longer safe to enter. One can walk into any old house and see dandelions peeking through the floorboards.  Or walk through the various historic sites, of the Hoosac Tunnel, perhaps, and see pieces of the past, where nature exists within history.

Like the beavers who live alongside the West Portal, creating shapes, changing the landscape, and adding to it as parts break, we as humans do the same thing.

The history of the Hoosac Tunnel is rich with individual narratives, horrible deaths, and more, which enable the stories of the tunnel to be all the more interesting. With the wide range of stories, there enables a wide range of materials to show them, including TimelineJS, Storymap, of course visual aspects such as video, and the more straightforward nature writing.

The Vault will play into our writings as well. The archives we have access to, mostly documents which have been scanned and posted online, will aid us in our research. Physical artifacts will help us as well, and the aid of the local historical society will be of great use to us.

Our schedule is very loose, as we may change dates as time goes on, including adding more due dates as they come.  For now the schedule is as follows:

February 22 : Compiling a list of names of dead

February 22 – 25:  Figuring out what materials we need

February 26 – March 2 : Visiting the Library and the Vault. Seeing the artifacts

March 3 : Visiting the Historical Society (10am to 4pm)

March 4: Visit the East Portal, nature writing on site, some B-roll footage if possible.

We have also designated some responsibilities for the two of us.

Cassie: TimeLineJS, StoryMap, maintaining the blog/ writing pieces, research/ visiting the site. Positive affirmation guide / spotter of beavers.

Erica:  filming and editing videos, maintaining the blog/ writing pieces, research/ visiting the site. Driver / navigator extraordinaire.

The Hoosac Tunnel, although well known, has much that is no longer understood. In seeking the truths that the tunnel will tell, we may be able to see more than what even the builders themselves fully intended to show.

Archival documents were mostly found online through the form of photos and maps. The most promising vessel of information discovered from the North Adams Public Library happened to be Builders of the Hoosac Tunnel by Cliff Schexnayder. This particular text contains over 500 pages of history of the Hoosac Tunnel as well as over 123 pages of bibliography and endnotes (a true brick of information). With some help from a mutual friend (an expert in the Hoosac Tunnel, and currently working as a railway dispatcher near Boston), I was able to find some promising sources of photos, stories, and other information. Some websites need some further research to prove the validity of the information (for example I found some conflicting information from one site to the book – the same event, however dated during two different days), however they do seem promising as far as picture sources.

Overall the materials found and used enabled me to understand much more about the location itself than I knew already. Living in this area for 3 years, there are a lot of stories you hear just in day to day life, especially from asking locals or those who have lived here their whole life. Actually sitting down and being able to read about the history of this place, as well as seeing this place in the few photos taken as well creates a new life for this location. It is really different sort of understanding that there are a lot of ghost stories surrounding the area and then actually discovering that over 100 people died in the tunnel itself (not to mention the some 90 people that died elsewhere around the property).

The TimelineJS program really puts everything into perspective, seeing everything laid out in a numerical way. Watching the creation of the tunnel, essentially, as the timeline lays out the dates. I think it is really useful, especially for this project, because it was a very long process. The other program, StoryMap, would have been great as well, however due to the fact that we do not have pictures of the locations yet, it would make it difficult to create a map. Overall the Timeline seems to be a better resource for us for this location. There are a lot of events happening almost simultaneously, so it is nice to see it laid out in a clean, simplified way.

Once we have more information, videos, other photos, and more, I think it would be interesting to combine the information into the StoryMap as well as use the TimeLine. Because the tunnel is so long (over 4 miles) it would be interesting to layout all the information possible onto a map. For now, however, the timeline works well with what we currently have.

 

Book Citation:

Schexnayder, Cliff. (2015). Builders of the Hoosac Tunnel. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Peter E. Randall Publisher.