Western Gateway Heritage Park

November 30, 2019 Cold

This park consists of a visitor center located in a former railroad yard in North Adams, in Western Massachusetts. The exhibits relate to the role that the town played in the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel, a nearly 5 mile tunnel that was in 1875 the longest tunnel in North America. The tunnel extends from North Adams on the west side to emerge in the town of Florida on the east side.

The visitor center has a wide variety of exhibits and artifacts. Miles enjoyed the miniature of the town.

Much of the museum is devoted to the actual excavation of the tunnel and the machines used to do the work. There are also some samples of different rocks from the excavation that the kids could touch.

The tunnel is still in use mainly for freight trains. While the west portal is in the woods, we heard that the eastern portal is more easily visible in Florida, although we didn’t make a trip to find it (although we did enjoy passing through Florida on our trip). Unlike the Florida of Sunshine State fame, this small town sits on top of a mountain and was fairly snow-covered at the time.

This state park has a good visitor center and could be a fun stop for anyone interested in railroad history and exhibits. It is also close to Natural Bridge, which we visited on the same day.

A quiet visitor center with plenty of exhibits and a few hands-on activities.
This is a small visitor center. While it’s educational, there’s not much else on premise.
The museum was pretty nice but no one was in it. This is because there wasn’t much to see other than the museum.
I learned a lot in this state park. Such as the tunnel is the longest in the east coast back then!
The tunnel was long but in the museum it’s pretty short.