Sandhog is the slang term given to urban miners, construction workers who work underground on a variety of excavation projects in New York City, and later other cities. 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 tunnel boring machines to explosives to remove material for the project they are building. The term is an American colloquialism. Starting with their first job in 1872, the Brooklyn Bridge, the "hogs" have built a large part of the New York City infrastructure including the subway tunnels and sewers, Water Tunnels No. 1 and No. 2 as well as the currently under construction Water Tunnel No. 3, the Lincoln, Holland, Queens-Midtown, and Brooklyn-Battery tunnels. In addition, they worked on the foundations for most of the bridges and many of the skyscrapers in the city. Many of these workers are Irish or Irish American and West Indian. Sandhogging is often a tradition and is passed down through generations of families; since mining projects span decades, it is not uncommon for multi-generations of families to work together on the same job.
Appearances in media
In the October 1997 issue of Esquire magazine, a series of photographs by David Allee, with a text accompaniment by Thomas Kelly, document the life and work of sandhogs. In 2006 at Grand Central Terminal in New York City there was a large-scale photo and video installation about the sandhogs, "The Sandhog Project", created by artist Gina LeVay.
Thomas Kelly's 1997 novel about sandhogs, Payback, was reissued in 2008 as Sandhogs by Soft Skull Press.
David Grann's 2003 article about sandhogs, City of Water, appeared in the September 1 issue of The New Yorker and was republished in his collection The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. It has been optioned for a movie.
On September 7, 2008, The History Channel began "Sandhogs" a series on the sandhogs.
The episode "A Man a Mile" deals with the death of a sandhog during construction of Water Tunnel No. 3.
The Cold Case episode "Sandhogs" deals with the death of a Sandhog in 1948.
A Public Broadcasting System sponsored documentary show American Experience 2014 episode "The Rise and Fall of Penn Station" details the work done by the sandhogs in the creation of the rail tunnels connecting New York and New Jersey.
The podcast 99% Invisible released an episode on sandhogs in March 2015.
Chuck Wendig's urban fantasy novel, The Blue Blazes. The protagonist is a former sandhog, and one of the central elements of the plot is Water Tunnel No. 3, a sandhog construction project.
The final episode of season 4 of The Strain refers to sandhogs as the builders of Water Tunnel No. 3, where the scenes were filmed.
Scorpion Season 3 Episode 14, where Walter refers to the workers as mole rats, as he felt the sandhogs nickname 'is illogical', and Toby corrects him to sandhogs.
