The turnpike is older. We used to take it to visit my grandfather in Pottsville. Very beautiful then. Of course, there was much less traffic in those days. We kids would lay around in the back of the Chevy station wagon with the rear window open while dad hit 90 mph as he smoked his filterless Raleigh cigarettes. Good times.

I loved the video. It brought back memories. As a kid in the 50's, our parents would take us on the PA Turnpike from Bedford to Donegal to see family every year at Christmas. The highlight of the trip was going through the Laurel Hill and Allegheny Mt. Tunnels. It was always exciting for us young kids to see the tunnels in the distance then to travel through them, bright lights, loud noise and all. They were poorly designed however with 4 lanes of traffic suddenly narrowing to two lanes in the tunnels. There was such traffic congestion because of the turnpike narrowing and such frequent and severe accidents within the tunnels due to head-on collisions, that many of the tunnels had to be changed. A second tunnel was dug at the Blue Mountain Tunnel (and several others) so that each traffic direction had its own tunnel and other tunnels, such as the ones in your video and the Laurel Hill Tunnel near Somerset were abandoned and the turnpike re-routed through cuts in the mountains around them. Laurel Hill Tunnel is now used by Chip Ganassi Racing for race car testing.

My brother went to boarding school in Philadelphia in the early 1950's and Mama and I made numerous trips on the turnpike from Norfolk. I remember we got a ticket when we got on the turnpike and would always stop along the way for snacks - the reason was the ticket was stamped getting off the turnpike which showed elapsed time/average speed, and Mama liked driving fast.

I rode through this tunnel many times before it was bypassed. The tunnels were the best part of our yearly visits to Pittsburgh.

Those reflectors are called "cat's eyes"

Brought back a lot of memories. The first tunnel was Rays Hill, the second Sideling Hill. I rode through them many times on the way to and from Grandma's house in Mount Carmel. The by-pass around them was built in 1968, financed entirely by toll revenue. I watched it being built; at the same time they were doubling the Tuscarora Mountain and Kittatinny and Blue Mountain tunnels.

I have been in the currently operating tunnels and even though Rays Hill has not been operational in over 50 years and the current tunnels having numerous updates. The stairs, control room and ventilation system has not changed all that much.

The Sideling Hill Tunnel and Rays Hill Tunnel, the ones in your video, were bored in the 1880s for the never-completed South Pennsylvania Railroad (aka "Vanderbilt's Folly"'; see Wikipedia). The turnpike authority repurposed them, along with 4 other tunnels.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike's original section opened in 1940. Sideling and Rays Hill Tunnels were bypassed with a new highway in 1968. The western end of the old turnpike is used to connect the main line to route 30 in Breezewood. For years the abandoned Turnpike was kept in good condition, when John Foor still worked at Everett Maintenance. But once the old Turnpike, 8 miles of it, was turned over to the Southern Allegheny Conservancy, it just went to pot with a lot of unsightly graffiti along the highway. I discovered the old Turnpike in 1973 and at that time was still owned by the PTC. They posted no trespassing signs out there . When the internet came along and this old road was "discovered", they deeded the 8 mile segment. It really should become a state park, with the tunnels rehabilitated and roadway fixed.

It's a shame its a vandalized. I read a post that Pennsylvania should clean it up and make a state park out of it and I think that would be awesome

That tunnel and its related structures will probably still be there thousands of years from now.

If I lived in the area I might set up a food stand or a food truck, a good business opportunity.

Hello , it was very nice to meet you and your wife today at the New River Gorge park today .

I went there 5 years ago, its way more overgrown than it was before.

In addition, this section and a few other abandoned sections of the original turnpike were still used by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation as test and research areas for different things such as ROAD REFLECTORS, which the original turnpike did not have.....What you are seeing there is just that: a test reflector or actually a row of them, maybe from 1994?

No, I am sorry but this abandoned section was not built in 1968 but was built in the late '30s and opened on October 1, 1940. It was abandoned on November 26, 1968, (maybe that is the date that you are thinking, the time when this stretch was actually abandoned and started to morph into what you are showing us here; a road that is slowly fading away back to nature.), when the new stretch of Turnpike was cut out of the forest and laid over Sideling Hill. This is a nice video, thank you for filming this.

Great video mate !

That would be a sick skate spot!!😁😁

That tunnel would have been a perfect place to meet someone wearing a goalie mask

The planning of the bypass began in 1961 after studies were made regarding the fate of the Rays/Sideling Hill Tunnels. Several alternatives were suggested including new tunnels. Instead a 13 mile bypass was built, starting construction in 1966 and completed in 1968.

whoa.. @ 2:35 I'm totally getting vibes of that move The Road! That looks just like the tunnel and landscape of the scene where the guy and the kid are asleep in the abandoned vehicle and there is a group of cannibal marauders emerging from the tunnel.

There used to be a rest area there and a Howard Johnson's I believe and either a mobil or Sunoco gas station. It's amazing to see how much has changed in 50 years

You should have taken a bigger and brighter flash light !! Spooky!!

I love this place. It's so much fun on a pitbike

The big fans kept the fumes down in the tunnel and supplied fresh air

Super cool!

to remove car fumes from the tunnel

We now know where this county's underage drinking hot spot is. Boring a tunnel is no small achievement. I wonder if it could be used for fiber optic cable. If left alone by mankind, Pennsylvania would be nonstop forest from the Philadelphia Navy Yard to Lake Erie. This beautiful terrain is evidence of that.

`Mysteries of the Abandoned' tv show.

If you would’ve kept going on the dirt road you would’ve came up to an old ranger station and there’s a trail from there right up to the mouth of that second tunnel

Not to nitpick, because I did enjoy your video, but this section of abandoned turnpike wasn't "Built in 1968", it was abandoned (as a turnpike) in 1968 (although it has been used sporadically in the years since for law enforcement / highway engineer training, and even as a movie set). It OPENED to the public as part of the PA Turnpike in 1940.

When you look at interstate 476 from back in the 50s and 60s before they took out all the tunnels and it was called route 9 back then or PA 9 and I think there was something like 14 or 15 tunnels between Norristown where it started and Allentown The ability to daylight the tunnels and dig through the rock back then didn't exist like it does today and they blasted through the Rock and made little tunnels that were single Lane each side and there are even old postcards from I think the 70s that show the tunnels just before they were excavated and daylighted using hydraulic jackhammers and pile drivers with heavy equipment to Chip away all the rock and it took a while and they realigned the road when they did that Now they are working on expanding the lanes and watching how fast the giant hydraulic equipment cuts down these huge rock walls and they are able to excavate in a matter of months what would have taken decades when the highway was built is just amazing

Definitely want to see this by bicycle.

Nice video, thanks for posting it. Looks like the tunnel was cut round, using a circular cutter (like what the Boring Company uses). So adding a ceiling and creating a maintenance space above the roadway, while increasing the strength of the tunnel is a bonus. Sure looks like a great place to ride bikes and cover significant distance, even bike-camp. Music kind of sucks as it's uninteresting and too loud.

That road is in ten times better shape then the streets here the city I live in. Potholes every five feet And that is the honest truth! Bloomington Il. Thanks to our Bloomington city council hoarding our tax dollars and giving away big tax incentives over the years.

Small thing, it’s I-76. It’s not a Route. I don’t know why NJ and PA call interstates routes, there is a very big difference and it confuses people!

Drove the Pennsylvania turnpike 45 years ago.

It DO go through...

Who are the other voices in the background?

Jim throne bike trail I think you were one

you’re out of your god damned mind if you think i’m going to ironwork in kentucky

The fan was to exhaust the vehicle exhaust

Does anyone know what the structure at 40.0456,-78.068 is? It's on the forbidden, no-tresspassing part of the abandoned Turnpike. It looks like some kind of sports field, but that's not a practical place for one. Maybe for solar panels that were once planned to be installed?

Are you supposed to enter, risky man !!

how safe is this walk as far a personal safety and human predator's

place to hide if asteroid hits

Why do so many KZfaq creators include loud, almost always inappropriate music in their videos? WHY?

You think people would have something better to do than carry spray paint 1.6 miles

Wrong turn

#rikkirockett