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A man named William Henry “Burro” Schmidt spent thirty-two years digging a two thousand foot long tunnel through a mountain. By himself.
Well technically he wasn’t completely alone there were always two donkeys with him, which he named Jack and Jenny. But otherwise he lead a pretty solitary existence.
Sometimes he’d work as a hired hand for a local ranch to support himself but he much preferred to focus on his obsession of digging the tunnel day after day.
He had originally intended to make the tunnel as a way to transport ore through that particular mountain, though in the end he never actually did that.
Wow wonder what he was thinking the whole time. Thirty-two freaking years, I haven’t even been alive that long. At least you can say one thing about Schmidt though …he finished what he started.
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What did he do when he was done?
I’m guessing he died pretty shortly afterwards. I mean, he was done, right?
Nice story.
Hi Krudler glad you liked the story! Some sources say that after the tunnel was done he sold it to another miner and moved away (I know crazy thought right?). Others say that he retained ownership and ran it as sort of a tourist attraction. I’m not sure which is the correct version at this point.
He was in his sixties by the time he finally finished the tunnel and lived another sixteen years afterwards.
He did gain a bit of notoriety for his amazing feat and got featured in places like Time magazine and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not (they dubbed him ‘the human mole’). Apparently his tunnel is estimated to last for 500,000 years 0_o.
Must me those mole genes.
Just think what they would’ve done with him nowadays – he would’ve been pimping some energy drink. “Feeling listless? Can’t get that last thousand feet of the tunnel done? Try Zeroin! Now in oat flavor for donkeys.”
But if he was in Ripley’s, he probably did capitalize on the very absurdity of it all. I gotta read more (to the googlemobile).
Lol oh man Krudler you crack me up, you’re probably right too about the energy drink thing. Or maybe it’d be some kind of mysterious ‘nutritional supplement’ type product, either way they would have squeezed every last time out of him. Did you ever find out more btw?
Wow! I dont know what to say, Iam shocked. My first thought when I read “He had originally intended to make the tunnel as a way to transport ore through that particular mountain, though in the end he never actually did that” was a Human Ant! No purpose but only to move forward all the time!
Nairim, He was such an interesting person wasn’t he? I would have liked to sit down with him and have a good long conversation about what motivated him to do what he did. Of course he’d probably be much too busy digging his tunnel to have a long conversation lol.
I don’t know how my son’s name got connected to my facebook/gmail but the 7th like is from me. Back later.
Hi Sharon,
No worries, looks like maybe he was signed into Facebook on your computer or something…just a guess though. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help :).