Public Domain Photo: A tunnel in the Pioneer Cabin Tree cut in the 1880s, photo by John J. O'Brien, 28 August, 2005.
A large tunnel was cut through the Pioneer Cabin Tree located in the Calaveras Big Trees State Park, located 4 miles (6.4 km) northeast of Arnold, California, in the 1880s in order to compete with the Wawona Tunnel Tree in Mariposa Grove in the Yosemite National Park.
Public Domain Photo: The Wawona Tunnel Tree, Mariposa Grove, Yosemite Valley, California.
Public Domain Photo: The Wawona Tunnel Tree, Mariposa Grove, Yosemite Valley, California, photo by C. Cameron Macauley taken on June 1, 1946.
Public Domain Photo: The Wawona Tunnel Tree, Mariposa Grove, Yosemite Valley, California, Library of Congress photo, 1918 June 15.
The 2300-years-old Wawona Tree (or Wawona Tunnel Tree), was a famous Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum, also known as Sierra redwood, or Wellingtonia) that stood in Mariposa Grove in the Yosemite National Park, California. It had a height of 227 feet (69 meters) and was 90 feet (27 meters) in circumference.
In 1881a tunnel was cut through the Giant Sequoia through a scar caused by wildfire, at a cost of $75 paid to two workers. The Wawona Tree had a slight lean which aggravated on tunneling. However, with its new status as the Wawona Tunnel Tree, it became a very popular tourist attraction, as thousands of tourists came to have their photos taken driving through it or standing beneath it. It was photographed accommodating everything from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles, before the Wawona Tunnel Tree fell in 1969 because of an estimated two-ton load of snow on its crown.
Public Domain Photos: Tunnel Log, Crescent Meadow Road, Sequoia National Park in California
The Tunnel Log is a tunnel cut through a fallen giant sequoia tree in Sequoia National Park in California so that visitors can drive their cars through it. The tunnel is 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall and 17 feet (5.2 meters) wide. In December 1937, a sequoia tree, 275 feet (83.8 meters) tall and 21 feet (6.4 meters) in diameter, fell across the Crescent Meadow Road due to natural causes. In the following summer, a Civilian Conservation Corps crew cut a tunnel through the tree.
Public Domain Photo: The Shrine Drive-Thru Tree, a tree that visitors can drive through in a car, located at Myers Flat, Humboldt County, located on the far North Coast 200 miles north of San Francisco, photo taken on September 2, 2007.
The Shrine Drive-Thru Tree offers passage through a tunnel carved into a naturally angled opening in the trunk. The sign displayed at the site about the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree reads: “SHRINE DRIVE-THRU TREE, Age: 5000 years, Height: 275 feet, Diameter: 21 feet, Circumference: 64 feet, Myers Flat, California”. This tree tunnel is about 7 feet in diameter and 83 meters high.
Three other legendary drive-though tree tourist attractions stand near 101 Highway: Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree, the Tour-Thru Tree (at the northern end of the Redwood Country near Klamath), the Step-Thru Stump and the Drive-On Tree (a fallen giant with a partially paved ramp up).
The age of the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree, shown as 5,000 years old, is an exaggeration, because, top five of the verified oldest measured nonclone trees are:
1. Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, (known as Methuselah), Pinus longaeva - 4,844 years
2. Alerce, Fitzroya cupressoides - 3,622 years
3. Giant Sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum - 3,266 years
4. Sugi, Cryptomeria japonica - 3,000 years
5. Huon-pine, Lagarostrobos franklinii - 2,500 years
Also, view the YouTube video (below) of a car passing through the tree tunnel and also showing the hollow inner pith of the tree.
Photo: A tourist inside Hezekiah's Tunnel in Jerusalem, Israel
Hezekiah's Tunnel, also known as the Siloam Tunnel, was dug underneath the Ophel (the elevation in two cities: the City of David in the Old City of Jerusalem and at Samaria, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Israel) before 701 BC during the reign of King Hezekiah. He (alternatively: Ḥizkiyyahu, Yeẖizkiyyahu, Ḥizqiyyā́hû, Yəḥizqiyyā́hû, Ezekias, or Ezechias) was the son of Ahaz and the 14th King of Judah who is believed to have reigned between 715 BC and 686 BC. It is one of the oldest structures in the world that the public can visit and walk through.
Both the written Siloam inscription found in the tunnel and dating the organic matter in the original plaster in the tunnel shows it as an 8th century BC structure. Leading from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam, the 533 meter long curved tunnel was designed as an aqueduct to provide water to Jerusalem during an impending siege by the Assyrians. According to the Siloam inscription, the tunnel was dug by two teams from each end and they met in the middle. However, scholars of recent times suggest that the tunnel might have been created by widening a pre-existing natural karst.
