Tunnel Hill (Chetoogeta Mountain Tunnel)

The standing point is the front lot of the Tunnel Hill Heritage Center on Clisby Austin Drive, where the Georgia historical markers for the Western & Atlantic Railroad Tunnel, Tunnel Hill and the Austin House stand together at the corner of the museum. Whitfield County maintains the site, and Explore Georgia lists its parking as free. The Heritage Center's admission ($13 self-guided, $15 guided, on its own rate card) buys the tunnel, the visitor center and museum, the replica general store and the Clisby Austin House; the parking is free and the view of the line is from the lot, so watching trains needs no ticket.

From the markers, CSX's W&A Subdivision passes about 35 to 40 m (115 to 130 ft) to the north-north-east, across open grass with no trees in between on current satellite imagery. The line is two tracks wide here: the single main and the east end of the Tunnel Hill siding, which the RadioReference signal list for the subdivision gives as 11,347 ft (3,459 m) long between the Southeast Tunnel Hill and Northeast Tunnel Hill control points. The siding's east switch and its signals sit about 250 m (820 ft) east of the lot, beside the Tanyard Creek bridge.

Beyond that switch the tracks run into a strip of trees and, about 600 m (0.37 mi) from the lot, into the west portal of the 1928 tunnel through Chetoogeta Mountain. The trees along the south side of the track stand between the lot and that portal, so do not expect to see the tunnel mouth from here. Trains announce themselves instead by their horn for the Oak Street grade crossing, 120 m (390 ft) west of the lot, or by the sound of a train working through the tunnel.

CSX publishes no timetable for this freight line, so a visit is a wait. The Heritage Center is open Monday to Saturday, 10:00 to 16:00, which is also when its public restrooms are available. Whether the lot stays open on Sundays and after hours was not established; at those times, the public street at the Oak Street crossing is the fallback, from outside the gates.

Tunnel Hill is a small village in Whitfield County at about 256 m (840 ft) above sea level, strung along the railroad at the western foot of Chetoogeta Mountain, the wooded ridge the Western & Atlantic had to pierce to reach Chattanooga. From the Heritage Center lot the ridge closes the view to the east, and the line disappears into it.

The foreground is open and green. South of Clisby Austin Drive lies a large pasture that, according to the Dalton Citizen, the Holcomb family left to the county, some 80 acres in all, on condition that it remain a green park; the county's own listing gives 2 mi (3.2 km) of easy trails, open to foot travel, across the site. The brick Clisby Austin House of 1848, which the 1954 state marker places 400 yards south-east of the markers at the big spring, sits at the far edge of that pasture.

North of the tracks the village side is working and older: a long row of low buildings stands along the line, and the Tunnel Hill marker at the museum notes that the depot the State of Georgia began building in 1849, in anticipation of the railroad's completion, still stands nearby. The track itself runs on a straight east-south-east alignment here, crosses Tanyard Creek on a short bridge 260 m (850 ft) east of the lot, and passes over the Oak Street crossing 120 m (390 ft) to the west, where the village's main streets meet the railroad.

It is a quiet place between trains. The Heritage Center, the markers and the house give the setting its character; the railroad through it is a working freight main line rather than a museum piece.

The Western & Atlantic was Georgia's own railroad. The 1992 state marker at the Heritage Center records that the legislature approved it in 1836, that Stephen Harriman Long surveyed it, and that building the 137-mile (220 km) line took 13 years and cost more than four million dollars. Chetoogeta Mountain was the last obstacle between Atlanta and Chattanooga; while the tunnel was being dug, goods and passengers were carried over the mountain, and a community grew around the works. Tunnel Hill was incorporated on March 4, 1848.

According to the Heritage Center, excavation began in July and August 1848 on both sides of the mountain, the western crew driving 502 ft (153 m) and the eastern crew 975 ft (297 m), for a total length of 1,477 ft (450 m); the 1992 state marker gives 1,447 ft (441 m). The marker records that the two headings met on October 31, 1849, and that chief mason William Gray was the first to pass through. The first train entered the tunnel on May 9, 1850. The Heritage Center calls it the first major railroad tunnel in the South; the state marker, the first railroad tunnel completed south of the Mason-Dixon line.

On April 12, 1862, James J. Andrews and his Union raiders, who had stolen the locomotive General at Big Shanty (present-day Kennesaw), raced it through the tunnel with William Fuller's pursuing Texas close behind: the Great Locomotive Chase. In May 1864 General William T. Sherman made the Clisby Austin House his headquarters as the Atlanta Campaign opened; the Tunnel Hill marker dates the Union seizure of the village to May 7, 1864.

Larger locomotives and loads eventually outgrew the bore, and a new, larger tunnel, 1,557 ft (475 m) long, was built between 1926 and 1928; the old one was left unused. Restored between 1998 and 2000, the 1850 tunnel is now the centerpiece of the Heritage Center. The line itself never left state hands: the State of Georgia still owns the W&A, through the State Properties Commission, and CSX sought in 2018 to renew its lease of the 137.33-mile (221 km) line from Atlanta to Chattanooga for another 50 years after the lease then running expired at the end of 2019.

Tunnel Hill is the one place on the Western & Atlantic where the reason the railroad took thirteen years to build is in plain sight: Chetoogeta Mountain, pierced first in 1850 by what the Heritage Center calls the first major railroad tunnel in the South, and again in 1928 by the bore every CSX train uses today. Within a short walk of the same parking lot are a working Class I freight main line, the restored antebellum tunnel, the house Sherman used as his headquarters in May 1864, and the route of the Great Locomotive Chase.

It is also distinct from the two published spots on the same railroad. Dalton, 10.4 km (6.5 mi) to the south-east, is about the Norfolk Southern and CSX diamond seen from the city's viewing platform; Ringgold, 10.3 km (6.4 mi) to the north-west, is about the 1849 depot and its viewing platform in town. Tunnel Hill is single-track country with a long passing siding ending in front of the Heritage Center, trains coming out of a tunnel, and no platform at all: an open, free lot with the markers beside it.

The Heritage Center also notes that the old tunnel was used for scenes in the 2019 film Godzilla: King of the Monsters. For a railfan, the practical draw is simpler: a free place to stand, restrooms during opening hours, and a chance to combine an afternoon of CSX freight with the tunnel tour on the same visit.