Not even a woman walking inside it could stop the opening of the Eisenhower-Johnson Tunnel in 1973. Millions have passed through it since.

Four months before the first bore was completed, the headline and photo on the front page of the Rocky told the bizarre story on Nov. 10, 1972.

60 men walk out

as woman enters

highway tunnel

"GEORGETOWN (UPI) - Janet P. Bonnema, wearing miner's coveralls, a grin and a hard hat, walked into a tunnel through the Rocky Mountains Thursday to defy a superstition that women underground are bad luck. Sixty men walked off the job.

" 'Get out of here!' yelled a workman inside the mile-long $67 million Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel.

" 'You buy it and I will!' Janet shouted back, hitching up her coveralls. She had been kept out of the highway tunnel two years because of superstitious miners.

"Most of the workers returned after the 33-year-old engineering technician finished her tour that came two days after Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment giving equal rights to women."

" . . . Janet entered the tunnel with a wave and a grin at the guard who had barred her for two years."

Bonnema had to file a $100,000 sexual discrimination suit against her employer, the Colorado Highway Department, to gain entrance. More from the story:

"But W.K. McLaughlin, project manager for Straight Creek Contractors Inc., which is building the tunnel, said the superstition is no myth.

"It's no joke,' he said. 'Some years ago I took my wife into a tunnel we were working on in Climax (Colo.). The next day a man got killed.' "

Two years before, the highway department had hired Bonnema by mail and addressed her hiring letter to "Mr. Janet P. Bonnema."

The tunnel project was well known, of course, to Coloradans and the nation's truckers, who for decades had braved the steep, often icy 10-mile drive over Loveland Pass to reach Summit County. When it opened March 8, 1973, it carried traffic in one lane in each direction. It would be another six years before the second bore, named after former governor and U.S. Sen. Edwin C. Johnson, opened two more lanes.

Smoky dedication

On dedication day, Gov. John Love drove a limousine through the tunnel as the honorary "first driver." Except he wasn't really the first. That distinction went to a maverick nightrider who was arrested the previous October for his joyride.

After Love passed through, legislators, lobbyists and journalists boarded buses to make the 1.7-mile drive. Within minutes, the inside of the entire tunnel shimmered with the mirage-like effect of photochemical smog. The tunnel superintendent later explained that the 16 mammoth ventilation fans hadn't been turned on in deference to the dedication ceremonies.

On second thought

The Colorado Highway Commission initially planned to close Loveland Pass during the winter once the Johnson bore opened Dec. 22, 1979, to save the cost of snow plowing. But Winter Park, Steamboat Springs and other towns successfully lobbied against the idea, fearing that restrictions on trucking hazardous material through the tunnel would re-route more loads over Berthoud Pass and through their communities.

Today, with the Eisenhower Tunnel choked with winter ski traffic and talk of a new tunnel, more and more drivers are using the pass and going home the old-fashioned route.

Michael Madigan 150@RockyMountainNews.com