CARSON CITY, Nevada (Press Release) – For the first time in nearly two years Friends of Sutro Tunnel (Friends) will be opening the 28-acre Sutro Tunnel site to members of the public wishing to tour and get an up-close and personal look into one of Nevada’s most unique and historic mining sites. Tours will be offered throughout Sunday, Oct. 17, between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. by ticketed admission. All proceeds raised through the event will go directly toward work the Friends of Sutro Tunnel are doing to restore the Sutro Tunnel site.
Many artifacts, buildings and pieces of historic equipment located at the site are deteriorating.
“Friends of Sutro Tunnel have been working tirelessly over the last several years to launch a coordinated effort to breathe new life into the Sutro Tunnel site,” Friend of Sutro Tunnel Manager Chris Pattison said.” “Due to the limitations imposed by the pandemic, progress has not gone as fast as we’d wished. However, as things begin to open up, we felt it was the perfect time to invite the public to the site to see and experience it first-hand.
Restoration work of the on-site carriage house, warehouse, loading dock, mule barn, machine shop and entrance to the Tunnel have begun, but public support is necessary in order to fully revitalize the site.
“Preservation work is quite costly,” Pattison said. “Due to the significance of this historic site it is critically important we share the site, our mission and the story of the Sutro Tunnel with other Nevadans who share our interests.”
Earlier this month, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation made a significant donation to Friends of Sutro Tunnel. The Society donated three National Park-style interpretive markers to be installed at the Sutro site in Spring 2022. These three interpretive panels were gifted in order to draw attention to Adolph Sutro’s Jewish heritage and his vision to create the Sutro Tunnel.
“There is great commonality woven into the American Experience,” Jerry Klinger, president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation said. “In the late 1860s, a mix of different people with different views came together at the Sutro site to build something greater than themselves. They came together as one people, one country, as Americans. This is what our Society hopes to celebrate and share with those visiting this incredible site.”
The Sutro Tunnel is a 3.8-mile drainage tunnel, or adit, leading into a mine for the purposes of access or drainage. It was the brainchild of Adolph Sutro, a San Francisco and Prussian Jewish mining entrepreneur with an audacious plan. Sutro envisioned building a 20,498-foot-long tunnel from the Carson River Valley connecting to the Savage Mine in Virginia City, Nev. at a depth of 1,640-feet. Although the Sutro Tunnel was completed at a time when mining on the Comstock was beginning to decline, it did work to solve the problem of figuring out how to remove water from the mines.
The construction of the Tunnel began on October 19, 1869, nearly 152 years ago. The Tunnel was completed on September 1, 1878. Once fully operational in 1878, anywhere between two-and-four million gallons of water were drained from the upper levels of the Comstock mines via the Sutro Tunnel daily. Today the Tunnel drains approximately 13 million gallons of water annually.
The total cost of construction on the Sutro Tunnel in 1879 was between $2-and-$3.5 million. The Tunnel served its purpose, but never became the money-maker Adolph Sutro envisioned it to be. He sold his shares in the Tunnel for approximately $1 million in 1879. He then left the mining industry and returned to San Francisco where he became a successful real estate investor, major philanthropist and was even elected mayor in 1894.
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Preceding provided by Friends of Sutro Tunnel