Witching Hour - Strange History: A gold key and a road under the Detroit River

Witching Hour - Strange History Ninety-six years ago this week, President Herbert Hoover clicked a gold telegraph key in Washington to mark the opening of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. Fans at each end were built to swap out all of its air every 90 seconds.

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Witching Hour is our nightly local history and folklore feature. Ghost stories and legends are retold as stories people tell, not reported as fact. Sources are listed below the story.

Not a ghost story tonight. This week marks 96 years since a road opened under the Detroit River.

The tunnel

The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel runs 5,160 feet under the Detroit River between downtown Detroit and downtown Windsor. Its river section is nine steel tubes, sunk into a trench dug across the river bottom, and the road reaches 75 feet below the river. The engineers used three building methods in all, and the project was finished in 26 months, ahead of schedule.

The opening

The tunnel was dedicated on Saturday, Nov. 1, 1930. U.S. President Herbert Hoover clicked a gold telegraph key in Washington to mark the moment, while officials from both countries gathered at the ceremony. Regular traffic began two days later, on Monday, Nov. 3, 1930.

The odd part

A road under a river needs a lot of fresh air. Each end of the tunnel was built with six fans pushing fresh air in and six pulling exhaust out, enough to change all of the air inside every 90 seconds. It was built by a private company, while the other big road tunnels of its day were city or state projects.

In 1930 it was billed as the first road tunnel ever built between two nations, and it is still described as the world's only international road tunnel under water.