DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do it justice. Back in 1913, the folks living around these parts — merchants, farmers, ordinary residents — passed the hat and raised the money themselves to build a railroad that would link Fredericksburg all the way down to San Antonio. Now that is the kind of ambition that makes you sit up straight.
But ambition has a way of running headlong into geology, and geology does not negotiate. Standing between those two towns was a hill. Not just any inconvenient rise in the road — a hill that demanded a tunnel.
Nine hundred and twenty feet of tunnel, bored straight through the earth, and that little detour added a hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars to the cost and five months of hard, unforgiving labor before it was done. Five months of men swinging and drilling in the dark, hauling rock, breathing dust. When it opened, though, it opened something real — a faster trade route for the merchants and the farmers who had bet their money on it in the first place.
Now, riding that train through the tunnel was its own kind of experience. Every time a passenger train pushed into that darkness, the engine exhaust would shake loose small rocks from the tunnel walls, and those rocks had to be cleared off the track after every single pass. And the windows — you closed them, every time, or you got a face full of coal smoke.
That was just the deal. The railroad ran that way for decades, hauling goods and passengers, doing exactly what those 1913 investors had imagined. Then came 1942, and the whole operation came to an end — not with a ceremony, but with a sale.
The trackage was sold for scrap. All that iron, all those rails that men had laid through a hill, gone. What's left is the tunnel itself, still sitting beneath this hill, quiet now, a reminder that sometimes the most stubborn obstacle on the map turns out to be the very thing worth remembering.
What the marker says
In 1913 area residents raised money to build a railroad linking Fredericksburg to San Antonio. The 920-foot tunnel beneath this hill increased the cost by $134,000 and required five months of hard labor. It opened a faster trade route for area merchants and farmers. Each time passenger trains entered the tunnel, small rocks, loosened by engine exhaust, were removed from the track and the windows closed to keep out coal smoke. The railroad operated until 1942 when the trackage was sold for scrap. (1978)