Peter Woodland
Hudson River Tunnel Worker

Monument to Peter Woodland
in The Bayview-New York Bay Cemetery
Garfield and Chapel Avenues

Photo: C. Karnoutsos 2002

Hudson River Tunnel worker Peter Woodland is buried in Jersey City's Bayview-New York Bay Cemetery on Garfield and Chapel Avenues in 1880. The monument in the cemetery (now vandalized) bears the inscription: "Erected by the Order of Knights of Pythias in memory of Brother Peter Woodland, of Hector Lodge No. 49, of Philadelphia, Pa., who was killed at the disaster at the Hudson River Tunnel, Wednesday, July 21, 1880, aged 32 years. He sacrificed his life that others might live."

Before the successful construction of the Hudson River tunnel, known as the "Tubes," by the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, an attempt to build a tunnel was made by DeWitt C. Haskins in 1871. The project was temporarily abandoned in 1880 when tragedy struck the effort. Peter Woodland, superintendent of operations, was working on the tunnel in a pressurized compartment. He noticed gushing water from a break through the brick tunnel. He guided a number of men out of the shaft, but he and nineteen other workers, who remained in the compartment, were drowned in what was called a "blowout" from the opening. Woodland died in an attempt to save fellow workers.

Woodland's heroism is also memorialized by the Massachusetts Knights of Pythias in Lynn, MA, with the naming of the Peter Woodland Lodge #72,

The tunnel was later completed for the Hudson and Manhattan Tubes and was opened in 1908. It is now the PATH subway tunnel.

Reference:
Grundy, J. Owen. The History of Jersey City. Jersey City, NJ: Progress Printing Co., Inc., 1976.