The Hoosac Tunnel (also called Hoosic or Hoosick Tunnel) is a active railroad tunnel in western Massachusetts that passes through the Hoosac Range, an extension of Vermont's Green Mountains. It runs in a straight line from its east portal, along the Deerfield River in the town of Florida, to its west portal in the city of North Adams. Work began in 1851 under an estimated cost of $2 million and ended in 1875, having used $21 million. At its completion, the tunnel was the world's second-longest, after the Mont Cenis Tunnel through the French Alps. It was the longest tunnel in North America until the 1916 completion of the Connaught Tunnel under Rogers Pass in British Columbia. It remains the longest active transportation tunnel east of the Rocky Mountains, and is the sixth-longest railroad tunnel in North America. The American Society of Civil Engineers made the tunnel an Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1975. "Hoosac" is an Algonquian word meaning "place of stones". Construction Proposal and beginning The tunnel project was originally proposed in 1819 as a canal to connect Boston to Upstate New York via the Deerfield River on the east of the Hoosac Range and the Hoosic River on the west. That project was shelved, and later reborn as part of the new Troy and Greenfield Railroad. The project was nicknamed "The Great Bore" by its critics, including future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who said that he would like to "wall up a dozen lawyers at one end of the tunnel and put a good fee at the other." The most important proponent of the northern route and the Hoosac Tunnel was Alvah Crocker, a self-made paper mill owner from Fitchburg, Massachusetts. The project, which was promoted by Crocker but mostly organized and engineered by others, notably Hermann Haupt in the early stages, and several other firms under contract, under the direction of several head engineers assigned by the state of Massachusetts, which took over the project after it initially failed and went bankrupt. In 1841, Crocker formed the Fitchburg Railroad (chartered 1842, opened 1845) between Boston and Fitchburg. In 1844, Crocker incorporated the existing Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad, which ran from Fitchburg west to Greenfield, as well as northward (from Millers Falls) to Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1848, Crocker secured from the legislature a charter for the Troy & Greenfield Railroad (T & G), with