Auburn Tunnel was a 19th century canal tunnel

Canal tunnel

A canal tunnel is a tunnel for a canal. The biggest canal tunnel in the world is the Rove Tunnel in France. The oldest canal tunnel in the world is the Malpas Tunnel also in France, built in 1679. In the United States there is the Paw Paw Tunnel that opened in 1850.In some canal tunnels the towpath...

 built for the Schuylkill Canal

Schuylkill Canal

Schuylkill Canal is the common, but technically inaccurate, name for the Schuylkill Navigation, a 19th-century commercial waterway in and along the Schuylkill River in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The "canal" was actually a system of interconnected man-made canals and slack-water pools in the...

, near Auburn, Pennsylvania

Auburn, Pennsylvania

There is also an Auburn Township in Pennsylvania.Auburn is a borough in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, USA. The population was 839 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Auburn is located at ....

. Auburn Tunnel was the first transportation tunnel built in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

The tunnel was deliberately added to the canal to be a novelty, as the hill it was bored though could have easily been bypassed. The tunnel succeeded in becoming a major attraction, with people traveling over 97 miles (156.1 km) upriver from Philadelphia just to see it. The tunnel was periodically shortened and in 1857 was daylighted

Daylighting (tunnels)

Daylighting a tunnel is to remove its "roof" or overlying rock and soil, thus exposing the railway or roadway to daylight. This could also be seen as converting the tunnel to a railway or roadway cut...

 to become just an open-cut.

See also

• Montgomery Bell Tunnel
  Montgomery Bell Tunnel
  The Montgomery Bell Tunnel, also known as the Patterson Forge Tunnel, in Cheatham County, Tennessee, is a long tunnel through limestone rock which was the first "full-scale" water diversion tunnel built in the United States. It is also apparently the first "full-scale" tunnel of any type in the...
  
   – a slightly earlier aqueduct
  Aqueduct
  An aqueduct is a water supply or navigable channel constructed to convey water. In modern engineering, the term is used for any system of pipes, ditches, canals, tunnels, and other structures used for this purpose....
  
   tunnel in the United States
• Staple Bend Tunnel
  Staple Bend Tunnel
  The Staple Bend Tunnel, about east of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in a town called Mineral Point, was constructed between 1831 and 1834 for the Allegheny Portage Railroad. Construction began on April 12, 1831. This tunnel, at in length, was the first railway tunnel constructed in the United States...
  
   – the first railroad tunnel in the United States