The history of the Cressona Tunnel
West Haven, or as it is now known as the borough of Cressona*, is divided into two parts. East Cressona is the industrious section and home of the Aluminum plant, Schuylkill Products and Trail Gardens Center. West Cressona has the Dodge City Café. Both sides however need the other. To get from one side to the other was never easy. To correct this, the borough’s founding fathers had a tunnel constructed along Route 183. The tunnel now hosts approximately 120,000 vehicles every day. Mostly these vehicles consist of Walmart trucks as well as passenger cars filled with elderly people travelling to Bill’s Produce to purchase fresh fruit for their daily fiber intake as well as those of us who headed to the Dodge City Café for happy hour.
The tunnel became world famous when the producers of the video game Grand Theft Auto III used the entrance of the tunnel in the video game. Later the tunnel had a cameo appearance in the video game Donkey Kong. The tunnel also gained notoriety for being reversible on all major British holidays. On those days, such as Boxing Day, drivers will drive through the tunnel on the left side rather than the right. It is a spectacle to watch.
The tunnel was financed through a combination of revenue bonds, S& H Green stamps and soda bottle deposits. Ideas for the tunnel appeared as early as 1840, but soda bottles with a deposit hadn’t been invented yet, nor was glue and the S & H Green stamps would fall out of the books and onto the floor.
Since its construction in the early part of the 20th century, the tunnel has faced several problems. First it was the management and control of the toll booths. The toll booths were necessary to recoup the construction and maintenance costs, retire the revenue bonds issued, and return the staggering amount of soda bottles that were left along the roadside waiting to be redeemed. However the toll booths caused serious traffic back-ups. Eventually both of the booths were pillaged and burned by irate travelers, especially by those irritable elderly travelers in search of reasonably fresh fruit to maintain regularity. Today, the toll booths are a part of history and anyone using the tunnel is now required to have an E-Z Pass device.
The most serious problem with the tunnel is that it was not built high enough and the enormous size of todays trucks transporting stuff for consumers to buy resulted in hundreds of trucks stuck within the tunnel. Three years ago one truck loaded with whoopee cushions remained lodged within the tunnel for seventy-two hours, creating a massive traffic jam as well as a whoopee cushion shortage within the county.
It was decided that warning signals needed to be erected. Proposal after proposal was given a try. The first proposal was to construct a large piñata in front of both sides of the tunnel. This was a failure as truckers deliberately hit the piñata and then stopped to pick up the candy that spilled out before getting the truck stuck in the tunnel. The second proposal was to hang a trucker in front of the tunnel. This lasted only one week due to the protests from various human rights organizations and other do-gooders. Finally the Cressona Borough officials, after listening to the scientists who espoused the theory that watching Sponge Bob slows a person down, decided to utilize the system that is in place now, despite the substantial copyright fees that must be paid with cash, S & H Green Stamps or unreturned soda bottles. No further disruption of the tunnel traffic has occurred since.
* from the word "cresson" meaning a moderately yellow-green color.
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