Hand-dug tunnels through solid granite sound like tall tales, but this one is real. I had heard about a man who spent nearly four decades chipping away at a mountain, and I assumed the story had grown in the telling.
Then I drove a washboard dirt road into the California desert and found the dark opening for myself. One man started swinging his pick in 1900 and did not break through until 1938.
It is longer than most people stay in one job. The scale of that effort becomes harder to comprehend once you see the rock up close…