While President Eisenhower is often cited as creating the National Highway System, began in the late 1930's. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938 called on the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR), the predecessor of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), to study the feasibility of a toll-financed system of three east-west and three north-south superhighways. The BPR's report, Toll Roads and Free Roads, demonstrated that a toll network would not be self-supporting. Instead, the BPR's report advocated a 26,700-mile interregional highway network. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed a National Interregional Highway Committee, headed by Commissioner of Public Roads Thomas H. MacDonald, to evaluate the need for a national expressway system. The committee's January 1944 report, Interregional Highways, supported a system of 33,900 miles, plus an additional 5,000 miles of auxiliary urban routes.
The Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel is located approximately sixty miles west of Denver, Colorado on Interstate 70. It is the highest vehicular tunnel in the world, located at an elevation of 11,013 feet at the East Portal and 11,158 feet at the West Portal. The Tunnel traverses through the Continental Divide at an average elevation of 11,112 feet. The facility lies entirely within the Arapaho National Forest and is divided by two counties, Clear Creek County at the East portal and Summit county at the West portal. The Tunnel and the Continental Divide also separate two watersheds, the Clear Creek Watershed located on the east side and the Straight Creek Watershed located on the west side. Annual snow fall in the area averages 315 inches (26 feet) for the months of November through April.
The Tunnel was originally designed as a twin bore tunnel. Construction on the westbound bore (North Tunnel) began March 15, 1968 and was completed five years later on March 8, 1973. This bore was originally called the Straight Creek Tunnel, and later was officially named the Eisenhower Memorial Bore. Construction on the second bore began August 18, 1975 and was completed four years later on December 21, 1979. This eastbound bore was named after Edwin C. Johnson, a past Governor and U.S. Senator who had actively supported an interstate highway system across Colorado. Centerline to centerline, the two tunnels are approximately 115 feet apart at the east ventilation building entrance, 120 feet apart at the west ventilation building entrance, and some 230 feet at the widest point of separation under the mountain.
The length of the westbound (north) tunnel is 1.693 miles, and the length of the eastbound (south) tunnel is 1.697 miles (outside face to outside face of the ventilation buildings). The average grade of both tunnels is 1.64 percent rising toward the west (rising 1.64 feet for each 100 feet on the horizontal). The westbound tunnel curves slightly to the left, about midway into the mountain. The approach grades are steep, being 7 percent on the west approach and 6 percent on the east approach. Maximum excavated height for the tunnels is 48 feet with a width of 40 feet. However, when driving through the tunnels, the actual height is not apparent. The exhaust and supply air ducts are located above a suspended porcelain enamel panel ceiling and a drainage system is provided underneath the roadway surface. Today, the driver sees only the distance (vertical clearance) from the roadway surface to the ceilings in the tunnels, a distance of 16 feet, 4 inches. However, because of a series of variable message boards mounted from the ceiling, actual clearance is set at 13 feet, 6 inches. The width in both bores provides two traffic lanes of 13 feet each, providing a total travel width of 26 feet. Tunnel maintenance personnel utilize a walkway that runs adjacent to the vehicle travel lanes. The walkway also provides access between the westbound or eastbound tunnels through three cross passageways, which are spaced at 2,000 foot intervals. The tunnel is staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in order to provide a safe and adequate level of service to the motoring public. The current staffing level is 52 full-time employees.
One of my strongest memories of the tunnel was that it was one of the first projects that had women employees. Common myth held that women in a tunnel would cause it to collapse. The first woman ever to be employed on a tunnel project was Janet Bonnema of Georgetown, hired as an underground technician when officials misread her name ("James") and thought she was a man. When she showed up for work November 9, 1972, sixty miners walked off the job. Bonnema was immediately assigned to an office job. She sued the state and won the right to work underground on the tunnel project. BTW - the tunnel did not collapse.
The Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel (EJMT) was, for its time, a groundbreaking feat of engineering planning and design. The construction of I-70 and the EJMT through the Rocky Mountains was a major accomplishment toward the completion of the Interstate Highway System. It was the nation's most expensive highway project up to that point and remains the world's longest (at 1.7 miles) and highest (over 11,000 feet) underground thoroughfare. The EJMT stands as one of the great engineering achievements of 20th century highway design. The project has been awarded the 1993 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award; in
February 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) designated the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways as one of the "Seven Wonders of the United States." (Other "wonders" include the Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam, and the Panama Canal) and the 2000 Presidential Design Award.
Interesting Facts
* Traveling through the Tunnels the public saves 9.1 miles by not having to travel over U.S. Highway 6, Loveland Pass.
* The electric bill averages approximately $80,000 per month.
* The Tunnel operates 24-hours a day, seven days a week, employing 52 full-time employees with job duties that range from round the clock television surveillance, emergency response, tunnel washing, ventilation maintenance, tunnel sweeping, snow removal, heavy equipment servicing and repair, and water treatment.
* In 2000 approximately 28,000 vehicles per day, or 10.3 million vehicles for the year, traveled through the Tunnels.
* During construction approximately 1 million cubic yards of material was cleared from each bore. 190,000 cubic yards of concrete was used for each tunnel lining.
* There were three fatalities on the first bore; six fatalities on the second bore.
* The pilot bore was completed in 1964. The Eisenhower Memorial Bore took five years to complete and was dedicated March 8, 1973. The eastbound Edwin C. Johnson Bore took four years to complete and was dedicated December 21, 1979.
RIP Horst Ueblacker: I-70 Tunnel Builder
March 27, 2011
Engineer who designed curved tunnel bores, including the Eisenhower Tunnel, changed highway design
Horst Ueblacker is hardly a household name, but travelers through the mountains on I-70 benefit from his vision every time they pass through the Eisenhower Tunnel under Loveland Pass. That twin-bore tunnel and others were built on his concept with curved walls, which are more aesthetically pleasing and safer that arrow-straight tunnels. He died earlier this month at the age of 71, and today’s Denver Post carried an obituary.
“Ueblacker, an engineer who earned his degree in Austria, worked for an engineering company there. In 1962, workers at the Eisenhower Tunnel were having trouble with the first bore, said his wife, Susan Ueblacker. They contacted the Austrian company, which sent Ueblacker to Colorado. He worked on the tunnel during the day and took graduate classes at Colorado School of Mines at night.
“‘He was a geo-technical engineer, or rock mechanic, as they call them’” his wife said. It was the rock mechanic’s job to find out where and how to drill.
… “He’d been involved in European tunnels. Those with curved walls hold more weight and are more aesthetically pleasing,” [Dick Prosence who worked for DCOT at that time said].
The tunnel — officially the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel — is a gee-whiz wonder of highway construction. The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) lists the Colorado’s stretch of I-70 among the engineering marvels in the Interstate Highway system with four noteworthy sections: the one through the Dakota Hogback near Golden, the Eisenhower Tunnel, Vail Pass and Glenwood Canyon. The tunnel (1.7u miles long with a maximum elevation of 11,158 feet) is the longest mountain tunnel and highest point along the Interstate Highway System.
Ueblacker was also involved with designing the Glenwood Canyon section that was completed on October 14, 1992. This aesthetic section that includes tunnels and highways to follow the curves of the Colorado River and the contaour of the lane became one of the most expensive rural highways per mile built in the United States. The the American Society of Civil Engineers bestowed on the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) the 1993 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award for this section of the highway." (portion of article from here.)
My Garmin Legend Cx GPSr read the following coordinates: East Tunnel N39° 40.765 W105° 54.202 (11048'); West Tunnel N39° 40.737 W105° 56.106 (11077')
Here is a YouTube drive-thru of the tunnel.