Sandhog
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sandhog is the slang term given to urban miners, construction workers who work underground on a variety of excavation projects. Generally these projects involve tunneling, caisson excavation, road building, or some other type of underground construction or mining projects. The miners work with a variety of equipment from TBM (tunnel boring machines) to blasting a path for the project they are building. The term is a US-American colloquialism.
Starting with their first job in 1872, the Brooklyn Bridge, the "hogs" have built a large part of the city of New York -- the subways and sewers, Water Tunnels #1 & #2 as well as the currently under construction Water Tunnel #3, the Lincoln, Holland, Queens-Midtown, and Brooklyn-Battery tunnels to name a few, as well as the foundations for most of the bridges and many of the skyscrapers in the city. Since their work is mostly done below street level, in an unseen world of rock, sand, and earth, recognition of their achievements has been limited.
Sandhogs are diverse in backgrounds, interests, and personalities, but are generally united in their work. Sandhogging is somewhat of a tradition and is passed down through generations of families; since mining projects span decades, it is not uncommon to find multi-generations of families working together on the same job.
In the October 1997 issue of Esquire magazine, a series of photographs by David Allee, with a text accompanyment by Thomas Kelly, documents the life and work of the Sandhog.
