Tambra Sabatini

Frozen in Time Tambra Sabatini

College-Ruled Composition Notebook featuring the photographic art of Michael J. Henderson, RecordedLight.com. During the late 1860s, Oil City, Pennsylvania saw a frenzied rush by the railroads of the day to secure rights-of-way through what was at the time still a small borough. Getting trains north into the Oil Creek Valley and its surrounding boom towns was of paramount importance in the quickly expanding business of oil production, still in its infancy. The railroads were quickly replacing the need for horse-drawn wagons in the business of transporting oil the "old-fashioned" way, in wooden barrels. The ingenious Densmore tank rail cars were much more efficient for moving huge quantities of crude oil. One of the late arrivals to the railroad scene was the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad. Their attempt to secure a right-of-way up into the Oil Creek Valley in front of the "Hogback" for their Jamestown & Franklin branch failed, leaving them no other option but to tunnel right through the mountain, just 300 feet within the hillside for a total length of 1/4 mile. The tunnel was completed in 1870 (read the rest of the article on this historic tunnel and view more photographs of the stunning ice formations in the tunnel on the Bygone Highways website).