National Register Listing

Washburn Tunnel

3100 Federal Rd., Houston, TX

The first underwater traffic artery in the state of Texas and the second toll-free tunnel in the United States, the Washburn Tunnel replaced the Pasadena Ferry, which had been crossing the Houston Ship Channel since 1916. The tunnel signifies the rapid industrialization of the channel and served to encourage growth in the suburban communities of Pasadena and Galena Park. Serving an estimated 10,000 automobiles and trucks each day after its opening in 1950, today the Washburn Tunnel safely carries more than 30,000 vehicles daily on its route under the waters of the Buffalo Bayou.

The Washburn Tunnel, as conceived by the Harris County Commissioners Court in 1940, was proposed to allow the elimination of an inadequate 1916 ferry crossing over the Houston Ship Channel on Buffalo Bayou that linked the growing cities of Pasadena and Galena Park, Texas. More than 6,000 deep sea-going vessels and 10,000 barges moved daily on the Houston Ship Channel during the 1940s, in direct conflict with the Pasadena- Galena Park Free Ferry. The Harris County-Houston Ship Channel Navigation District first commissioned a study to determine the number of vehicles that would use the tunnel. It was estimated that over 10,000 vehicles would use the tunnel each day when completed; on its first day of operation, an estimated 55,000 automobiles passed through the tunnel's portals. Near the end of the 20th century, traffic through the tunnel reached over 30,000 vehicles per day. Between 1940 and 1947, Harris County planned the tunnel in collaboration with the engineering firm of Palmer & Baker, Inc., of Mobile, Alabama. A shortage of manpower and materials created by World War II delayed the tunnel's construction during these years, but it opened to great fanfare in May 1950 and has been in operation continuously since then.

<h6>Industrial Development of the Houston Ship Channel</h6>The Houston Ship Channel, one of the busiest waterways in the United States, achieved its earliest significance as a link between interior Texas and the sea. It traces its origin to early trade on Buffalo Bayou, which heads on the prairie thirty miles west of Houston in the extreme northeastern corner of Fort Bend County and runs southeast for fifty miles to the San Jacinto River and then into Galveston Bay. Recognizing the potential of the stream, the brothers John Kirby and Augustus Chapman Allen laid out the town of Houston at the head of navigation on Buffalo Bayou in 1836. As the waterway proved to be the only one in Texas that was dependably navigable, planters over a large area brought their cotton to Houston to be shipped by barge or riverboat to Galveston, the best natural port in Texas, where the cargoes were transferred to seagoing vessels and then to market. In 1869 a group of Houston merchants organized the Buffalo Bayou Ship Channel Company to improve the channel, and in 1870 they persuaded Congress to make Houston a port of delivery. The United States Army Corps of Engineers surveyed the channel and recommended a width of 100 feet and a depth of 6 feet. Still, because of inadequate appropriations, this effort brought few improvements. It was not until 1876 that the Bayou Ship Channel Company dredged a channel from Galveston Bay to the site of Clinton now called Galena Park near Houston. By 1909, however, the channel had been dredged to 181⁄2 feet.

Impatient at the slow progress, Mayor Horace Baldwin Rice led a delegation to Washington to present the "Houston Plan," which offered to pay one-half of the cost of dredging the channel to twenty-five feet. After receiving assurances that the facilities would be publicly owned, Congress accepted the offer. Prior to Houston's offer, no substantial contributions had ever been made by local interests, but since then no project has been adopted by the national government without local contributions. The Texas legislature passed a bill enabling Harris County to establish a navigation district, and the citizens then approved a bond issue of $1,250,000. Dredging was completed on 7 September 1914 and celebrated with great fanfare in the city. Because of shipping conditions during World War I, however, the channel's deep water development was delayed until after the war. In 1919 an ocean-going vessel took the first shipment of cotton directly from Houston to a foreign market, thus inaugurating a trade that made Houston the leading cotton port in the United States within a decade. Oil, which had been discovered in Texas early in the twentieth century, increasingly rivaled cotton as the most important cargo on the channel. Petroleum also led to the industrialization of the waterfront, for the long, protected channel with its nearby crude oil supplies proved an attractive location for oil refineries. By 1930 nine oil refineries operated along the channel. Although the Great Depression briefly interrupted the progress, the Port of Houston ranked third in the nation in the amount of tonnage carried on the eve of World War II.

The war suspended normal shipping activities but gave further impetus to the industrialization of the waterway. In addition to increasing the demand for customary petroleum products, the war inspired the development of synthetic rubber based on a byproduct of petroleum. Two synthetic rubber plants were located near the channel while the war was in progress, and after the war, the channel became a center of the petrochemical industry. In the postwar years, the port also became a major shipping point for midwestern grain. Growing foreign trade and new industry boosted the port to second in tonnage in the nation in 1948, and from then until 1964 it customarily ranked second or third. The combination of industry and transportation facilities, including a network of railroads, truck lines, and interstate highways, influenced the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to select a site convenient to the channel as headquarters for the nation's space program in 1961.

Congress approved a project to widen the channel to 300 feet from Fidelity Island to the turning basin in 1945, and in 1957 army engineers recommended that the entire channel be deepened to 40 feet. By 1964, the 50th anniversary of the deepwater channel, the federal government had expended $64 million for channel improvement and maintenance, and the local government had invested $28 million in port facilities. In return, economic activities related to the channel yielded $148 million annually in taxes. The channel-side industrial complex, valued at $3 billion, and shipping activities gave employment to 55,000 persons who received $314 million in wages annually. The Port of Houston was the first in the nation to introduce container shipping. By the 1970s 4,500 ships flying the flags of sixty-one nations passed through the channel annually.

<h6>The Growth of Galena Park and Pasadena, Texas</h6>Galena Park is a portion of an 1824 land grant from the Mexican government to an individual settler, Ezekiel Thomas. When Thomas died in 1835, his family sold the land to Isaac Batterson, who built a small settlement on Buffalo Bayou and named it Clinton. During its early years, Clinton was a farming and ranching community, but the development of the port of Houston after 1876 changed the character of the settlement. Clinton resident Charles Morgan, owner of the Morgan Steam Ship Company, dredged Buffalo Bayou and excavated a canal opposite Morgan's Point to open a channel for the port. He also built a cotton compress and constructed a railroad from the main line in Houston to a location opposite Buffalo and Sims Bayous. Clinton continued to be the terminus for much of the bayou shipping until a turning basin was constructed in later years. By the early 1880s cotton warehouses and compresses were located along the bayou and railroad, and Clinton prospered in its new role as a railroad and shipping center.

In the early 1900s, the petroleum industry began to take advantage of Clinton's prime location. The first refinery there was built by the Galena Signal Oil Company of Texas, which was later bought out by Texaco. Another refinery, established by C. D. Keen and W. C. Woolf of Shreveport, Louisiana, was eventually acquired by Gulf Oil Corporation. Other important early industries in Clinton included the United States Steel Company, which constructed an office and warehouse adjacent to the Southern Pacific terminal facilities in 1927. In 1935 Clinton changed its name to Galena Park, in honor of the oil company, after an initial request for a post office was denied because another Clinton, Texas, already had the name. In 1936 the town had 300 residents and twelve businesses. However, beginning in the late 1930s, with the development of Houston as a major port, Galena Park grew rapidly. In 1952 the population was 7,162. Growth continued until the mid-1970s when the town reported a peak population of 12,645. Afterward, however, residents declined to 9,957 in 1988, when the town had 101 businesses. In 1990 the population was 10,033, and in 2000 it was 10,592. Since the 1940s the town has been considered a part of greater Houston. The original name survives in the town's main street, Clinton Drive.

John H. Burnett of Galveston founded the town of Pasadena in 1893 and named it for Pasadena, California, because of the site's lush vegetation. The La Porte, Houston, and Northern Railroad was built through the townsite in 1894 and opened the area for development as a farming community. Retired Kansas banker Charles R. Munger and land promoter Cora Bacon Foster were instrumental in organizing the early community. After the Galveston hurricane of 1900 Clara Barton, of the American Red Cross, purchased 11⁄2 million strawberry plants for Gulf Coast farmers, and Pasadena quickly established itself as the strawberry capital of the region. By the 1920s all of southeast Harris County was known as "Pasadena Acres."

The citizens of Pasadena voted to incorporate on 22 December 1923, then elected to disincorporate on 29 November 1924, and voted finally to incorporate in 1928. The city held about half the land Burnett had originally platted for his town. At the time of incorporation water, electricity, and gas utilities had only recently been brought to the community. Burnett had laid his town out on the southern bank of Buffalo Bayou, which became the Houston Ship Channel. When Joseph Stephen Cullinan, founder of Texaco, moved his company to Houston in 1906, he purchased 200 acres in nearby Pasadena. There he operated an experimental farm for twenty years, while he promoted this site and other lands along the ship channel. The Sinclair (now ARCO), Texaco, and Crown oil companies all built refineries in the area by 1920.

The transition from a farming economy to an industrial one did not occur until the late 1930s when the war in Europe spurred a major increase in the ship-channel industries. Pasadena had a population of 3,436 in 1940 and 22,483 in 1950, as the postwar boom continued. It annexed the communities of Deepwater, Middle Bayou, and Red Bluff. From 1.7 square miles in 1893 the community site grew to 58.6 square miles in 1980, when the city had a population of 112,560 people. In 1993 Pasadena had a population of 122,805 and 2,147 businesses. By 2000 the population was 141,674 with 3,709 businesses. Employment in Pasadena today is closely linked to the ship-channel industries, the Bayport Industrial District, and the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in adjacent Clear Lake.

<h6>Construction of the Washburn Tunnel</h6>The Harris County Commissioners established the Pasadena Free Ferry in 1916 to provide safe, reliable passage across the Houston Ship Channel for the large number of Pasadena residents who had found employment at the newly constructed Sinclair Refinery near Galena Park. Before that time, Pasadena residents typically would walk or ride bicycles from their homes to the end of Shaver Street at Buffalo Bayou, and from there they would row across the channel in private boats. Other alternative crossings included a more distant ferry or one of several bridges built across Buffalo Bayou in the city of Houston during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

By the end of World War II, more than 100 industrial plants had been located along the ship channel.' As increased industrialization created more employment opportunities and more commuters, the ferry could not meet rising demand. Depending upon conditions and the route selected, it could take commuters as little as fifteen minutes or as much as two hours to cross the channel; the closest automobile route 69th Street required a round-trip of 14 miles. 12 Harris County realized that better transportation was needed if the area was to continue to grow.

The Harris County Commissioners Court first considered the construction of a tunnel beneath the Houston Ship Channel in 1940, and it passed the first bond issue for the construction of a tunnel in 1944. The court then invited the Mobile, Alabama, engineering firm of Palmer & Baker to conduct a six-month transportation study, which was completed in April 1945. The firm had designed the subaqueous trench-type Bankhead Tunnel (1941) through the Mobile River, and this served as a model for the firm's design of the Pasadena Tunnel.

Automobile tunnels like the Bankhead were safe, economical, and the simplest to construct during this era. Other subaqueous trench-type tunnels in the United States at that time included the Posey Tube (1928) connecting Oakland and Alameda, California, beneath the Oakland-Alameda Estuary; and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel (1930), under the Detroit River between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, Canada. These tunnels each accommodated two lanes of vehicular traffic. The Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel in New York City (1927), now called the Holland Tunnel, is comprised of two two-lane tunnels, making four traffic lanes; the Lincoln Tunnel (1934-45), also spans the Hudson River in New York City, was similarly designed as a pair of two-lane tunnels, although only one tunnel operated between 1937 and 1945, and a third tunnel was added to the system in 1957.

Palmer & Baker completed the final plans for the Pasadena Tunnel in July 1947. Groundbreaking for the tunnel took place on 3 March 1948, and the general contractor, the New York-based marine and salvage firm of Merritt-Chapman & Scott, commenced construction shortly thereafter. The Ingalls Shipbuilding Company of Pascagoula, Mississippi, built the steel tubes for the tunnel in four 375-foot sections, each having a diameter of 35 feet. The tubes were then shipped by barge through the Intercoastal Canal to Galveston, Texas, up the Galveston Bay to the Houston Ship Channel, and then on to the old ferry site near Pasadena.

A local newspaper reported that the steel tunnel components "were fitted with watertight bulkheads at either end, launched one by one like any deep sea vessel and then looking like some prehistoric sea monster-were towed by tug through the Gulf and Inland Waterway." Upon their arrival at the Clinton Docks at Galena Park, two miles from the tunnel site and 400 miles from their origin, the four steel sections each nothing more than a circular steel tube enclosed in an octagonal outer shell-were prepared for "shape-up" work, were were were were as reported:

Still afloat, but settling deeper as work progressed, they were fitted with a two-foot thick inner ring of concrete, steel-reinforced roadway, walkway, ventilator ducts, and conduits. All concrete had to be poured through temporary openings in the top of the tube section, later sealed by welded plates. And every pour had to be delicately timed and balanced to guard against bending the steel framework in any way. In the last pour at the Clinton Docks, concrete was sent into the open space between the inner tube and outer shell until each section rode as low in the water as it could without sinking. Then, one by one, they were taken on their last two-mile ride to the tunnel site, where other crews had dredged the channel-bottom trench and had started construction of the approach sections. Nudging the unwieldy 375-foot sections into precise position above the trench called for perfect coordination [sic] ashore and afloat.

In order to send the buoyant tube to the channel bottom, more concrete was gradually poured between the outer and inner shells. The buoyancy of the channel's water varied as the salt content changed with the tides, and allowances had to be made accordingly. Although measured in tons, the concrete pour demanded great accuracy in order to maintain control over every inch of the tube's descent into the trench forty feet below the channel. The final, carefully timed pour "gently eased the tube sections atop steel pile bents driven into the trench bottom to act as temporary support until a bed of firmly packed sand could be placed beneath the tunnel. Huge fittings locked each tube section to the next and, on either end of the span, to the 'transition' sections joining them to the land approaches. Later these fittings were welded from inside the tunnel, turning the interlocked sections into a single shore-to-shore tube."

Because concrete poured under water must be sent down in one continuous flow, the tremie method of concrete casting was used to build the final outer casing for the submerged structure, cutting concrete down a 12-inch pipe toward the bottom of the Houston Ship Channel. The pipe's end was constantly kept just beneath the surface of the concrete already poured, and approximately 11,750 cubic yards of tremie concrete were required to fully encase the tunnel. Once the concrete casing was completed, the tunnel was covered with backfill. Then the temporary watertight bulkheads at either end of each section were taken down, and the finish work on the tunnel interior began.

<h6>Celebrating the Grand Opening of the Washburn Tunnel</h6>On Friday, 17 February 1950, "amid a shower of flying sparks," County Judge Glenn A. Perry, wearing a welder's hat and goggles, cut through the last steel bulkhead in the tunnel, and after the heavy steel plate was removed, the judge became the first person to step from the Pasadena side to the Galena Park side of the Houston Ship Channel. Onlookers included representatives from the firms of Palmer & Baker and Merritt-Chapman & Scott, as well as several county commissioners, the port director, members of the Houston Chamber of Commerce, and other former county officials who had taken part in the early stages of the project's planning. However, "one unscheduled event took place Friday [which] took tunnel officials so completely by surprise that for a brief interlude, it upset the festivities completely."17 While the politicos were milling about the refreshment table informally set up on the Pasadena side, an adventurous 19-year-old truck driver, Ray C. Armer, "chugged through the tunnel on his motorcycle, driving right through the crowd of brass on hand for the occasion," and earned the title of the first person to drive a motor vehicle of any kind through the new tunnel.

The young motorcyclist robbed Harris County auditor Harry L. Washburn the county official for whom the new tunnel would be named of an important honor being reserved for him: that of driving the first vehicle through the tunnel at its official opening celebration in May 1950. Washburn was absent from this unofficial tunnel joining or "opening" event that February, however, as he was at his mother's bedside; gravely ill, she died the following day.

Born in Columbus, Texas, Harry L. Washburn (1882-1954) studied civil engineering at the University of Texas before moving to Mexico in 1902, where he worked as an auditor for the International Mexican Railroad. In 1904 he applied for the position of Harris County auditor but was denied the post because of his lack of professional training. Undeterred, Washburn spent the next eight years studying law and accounting, and he became the auditor of Harris County in 1913, remaining in that position for 41 years. Upon Washburn's appointment, Harris County was deeply in debt, but by 1915 he had established a more efficient accounting system and transferred the county's finances to a cash basis. Years later he managed to do the same for the suffering State Highway Department, yet he refused to accept the state's $25,000 fee for this work, taking only a certificate of appreciation."

In 1949 a relatively new county commissioner, E. A. "Squatty" Lyons, put forth the measure to name the tunnel for Washburn, who had saved taxpayers millions of dollars during his tenure as auditor. Many residents and politicians in the county objected to Lyons's nomination, however, suggesting instead that the tunnel should be named the Pasadena Tunnel, the Galena Park Tunnel, or the Pasadena-Galena Park Tunnel, and some disgruntled individuals threatened lawsuits and made attempts to vote the commissioners out of their offices. Despite these difficulties, on 4 April 1949, the Harris County Commissioners Court voted to name the Pasadena Tunnel for Harry L. Washburn in appreciation for his many years of devoted service to the county and the state of Texas.

Demonstrating the friendly, but competitive, spirit of the two communities, elaborate ceremonies were planned at both ends of the tunnel to officially mark its opening. The north end of the structure, where the control building hovered over the tunnel entrance, would be the location for the county's official dedication program. Brass bands, politicians, and community leaders would gather with onlookers at the Galena Parkside for a series of public addresses. A plaque was to be unveiled, and County Judge Perry would snip the ribbon before a car carrying an official party would drive through the tunnel to Pasadena. As the automobile made its way across the Ship Channel, people would be allowed to walk through the tunnel from Galena Park to Pasadena the only time in its history that the tunnel has opened to pedestrian traffic.

Not to be outdone by the official pomp and circumstance on the Galena Parkside, the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce planned ceremonies that would "be a treat for those who walk through the tunnel," according to Pasadena Mayor Sam Hoover. Pasadena Chamber officials claimed that they were not consulted on plans for opening the tunnel and "decided to 'work up a little program of our own" in an attempt to "out-do" the ceremonies on the north side. "Radio stars of homespun humor" Lum and Abner, then appearing at the nearby Shamrock Hotel, were scheduled to "crack a few jokes" before Mayor Hoover addressed the curious throngs. The Pasadena Citizen also reported: "The Pasadena High School band will whoop it up with popular and patriotic music, soft drinks will be distributed free by the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, and a 1950 [Ford] model automobile will be given away." Advertisements in the newspaper reveal how local vendors sought to drum up business in celebration of "Tunnel Day," citing "plenty of entertainment" and offering sale prices on everything from wristwatches to men's slacks to permanent waves and other beauty-shop treatments. Texas Quarries, Inc., of Austin, suppliers of Cordova Cream, Cordova Shell, and "Randomstone" limestone products, bought a large advertisement space in the Citizen that deemed the Washburn Tunnel to be "Another Symbol of a Free, Progressive Texas."

At ten o'clock in the morning of Saturday, 27 May 1950, the official dedication ceremonies began at the Galena Park entrance. A band played while the Port Commission's fire boat conducted a demonstration with a naval vessel, and the 63rd Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard followed with a display of zooming planes. Two M-4 tanks fired 76-mm guns in a twenty-one-gun salute, perhaps the day's loudest event. P. P. Butler, president of the Houston Chamber of Commerce, gave the opening address at 10:45, and then eight hundred members of school bands from Baytown, La Porte, Crosby, Channelview, Klein, Galena Park, Woodland Acres, and the University of Houston simultaneously played the national anthem. The pastor of the Grace Methodist Church in Baytown, the Reverend Milton Jordan, made the invocation, after which the bands performed "Eyes of Texas." Next Roy Hofheinz, who served as county judge when the first plans for the tunnel were made, gave the principal address to the gathered crowd of over 10,000 citizens. "Bubbling with enthusiasm, Hofheinz predicted that industries would replace the open spaces and groves in the vicinity of the north end of the tunnel almost overnight...[and] he predicted a boom in residential growth of the same area immediately. He also forecast a population of 1,200,000 for Houston in 1960."

Mr. Butler, too, spoke of the significance of the Washburn Tunnel to the greater Houston area. "This is the first underwater tunnel in Texas and the second toll-free tunnel in the United States. It is perhaps the greatest single accomplishment to have been engineered since we dredged this Ship Channel and brought the waters of the Seven Seas inland almost to Main Street." Others spoke of the tunnel's ability to unite the growing Harris County, separated as two peninsulas. "We are joined, we are united, and we can now go forward together," said Hofheinz, who went on to suggest the establishment of a unified, county-city government.

But it was eighth-grade student Janice Cowart who addressed the real significance of the tunnel to the people attending the gala event that day. Reading from her poem, "Farewell, Old Ferry," the young Miss Cowart reminded the gathered crowds that it was the need for speed in a rapidly industrializing landscape that necessitated this subaqueous solution:
<em>The Pasadena ferry on Old Buffalo
Shall surrender her place to a tunnel below
For man must travel, and travel fast.
Farewell old ferry! Farewell at last!</em>

Serving an estimated 10,000 automobiles and trucks each day after its opening in 1950, today the Washburn Tunnel safely carries more than 30,000 vehicles daily on its route under the waters of the Buffalo Bayou. The structure encouraged the growth of the suburban communities of Pasadena and Galena Park and signifies the rapid industrialization of the Houston Ship Channel. The tunnel was the first underwater traffic artery constructed in the state of Texas and the second toll-free tunnel in the United States, and today it remains as the state's only subaqueous tunnel. The Washburn Tunnel is therefore nominated to the National Register under Criterion C in the areas of Transportation and Engineering, both at the state level of significance.

Local significance of the structure:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2008.