Soon after the former lieutenant in Napoleon’s army spent two years in Russian capture, he emigrated to the U.S. to create both havoc and historic engineering projects, prime among which is a Virginia mountain railroad tunnel now open for walking.
This daguerreotype of Claudius Crozet, ca. 1855, is from the Virginia Military Institute Archives. Crozet was VMI’s first president.
For the years after European settlement of the East Coast, the Appalachian Mountains had been an obstacle to commerce and further settlement. By the mid 1800s, there was a vision that a new railroad could open the Shenandoah Valley for settlement and serve as a corridor for tying the Virginia Tidewater region to the Ohio River.
But before this could occur, the barrier that was the Blue Ridge mountains had to be met and overcome. The task of vision, engineering and overseeing that mammoth task would fall to one of Napoleon’s captains, Claudius Crozet.
Crozet was born in 1789 near Lyons, France. As a young man, he enlisted in Napoleon’s army and was present at the collapse at Moscow, and fell into Russian hands. He was released from captivity and restored to his rank as Captain in the French army. When Napoleon was finally subjugated, Crozet quit the French Army, and in 1816 traveled to the United States.
After career stints at West Point in New York, at the Virginia Board of Public Works and as state engineer for Louisiana, he returned to Virginia in 1837. He resumed his former post as principal engineer for the Virginia Board of Public Works, at the same time accepting an appointment on the Board of Visitors of newly formed Virginia Military Institute, where he also became VMI’s first presiding officer.
Once back in his former Board of Public Works position, Crozet wasted little time in tackling the proposition of a railroad across the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Shenandoah Valley. But as Virginia and the United States suffered through the financial depression of 1837-1839, Crozet’s plans to tame the Blue Ridge via a new railroad gained little traction.
Crozet did not suffer well those who lacked his vision of a railroad. The State Legislature became exasperated with his nagging and abolished his position of chief engineer in 1843.
But by 1849, the State of Virginia incorporated the Blue Ridge Railroad, with Crozet at the helm, to construct a rail line for the Louisa Railroad from Mechums River, across its namesake mountain to slightly west of the town of Waynesboro. The Louisa was projected to continue westward to Covington, where it would link with another state-chartered railroad—the Covington & Ohio—to continue to the Ohio River.
The overall result was that the entire Blue Ridge Railroad would be comprised of a mere 17 miles of spindly rails, although those 17 miles would have a much larger impact in expanding the state’s economic wherewithal.
But before this railroad could reach fruition, the Blue Ridge would have to be breached. And Virginia put her hopes for that mammoth task in Claudius Crozet.
Crozet’s design for attacking the Blue Ridge Mountain included four tunnels, with the major one involving an unusually deep cut made in the west slope of the mountain at Waynesboro. Three of the tunnels—the Brooksville, Greenwood, and Little Rock—were each under 900 feet in length. The Blue Ridge Tunnel—the primary one—was to be 4,273 feet long, making it upon completion “the world’s longest railroad tunnel with no close contenders for the title.”
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The photo is a 1916 postcard of the Blue Ridge Tunnel, which opened in 1858.
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The Claudius Crozet Blue Ridge Tunnel restoration project provides a 2 ½-mile hike from the eastern trailhead in Nelson County, through the 4,237-foot tunnel, to the end of the western trail in Augusta County.
Burrowing through the Blue Ridge was slow, backbreaking labor; without pneumatic drills or nitroglycerin to aid in cutting and blasting through the rock, it was all bull work involving strong shoulders swinging a pick axe and hand drills boring holes into solid granite in order to pack in black powder.
As this project was moving at tortoise speed, short-term tracks were built above or around proposed tunnel locations. This allowed rail service to be made available to Staunton and Waynesboro as soon as possible. Staunton was connected by the interim track that cut over the Blue Ridge in March 1854. This was progress, as on March 20, the Virginia Central’s sleek eight-wheeler locomotive the Frederick Harris—drawing a single coach—arrived in Staunton, to much fanfare. But the temporary track’s 5.7 percent grade would prove to raise havoc. One of the first trains to cross over the mountain wrecked on its return journey eastwards the following day, causing one death and several injuries.
From the beginning Crozet’s tunnels were faced with unexpected problems. An upheaval erupted between crews from Belfast and those of County Cork. This led to labor slowdowns. Another problem was that the County Cork Irish were Catholic, and refused to man the hand drills and picks on the 36 Holy Days in the Church calendar.
The total work crew of 1,000 was made up of 800 Irish and 200 black slaves. The Irish employees struck in 1853 for higher wages. Critics, especially those whose communities were bypassed by the new rail line, attacked Crozet’s project as folly. But the real troubles became apparent when work began in earnest. The Brooksville Tunnel, one-sixth the length of the Blue Ridge tunnel was extremely problematic. The blend of limestone and clay found here, once exposed to the air, caused large pieces to cascade down from the tunnel roof. Rockslides regularly occurred, sending workers scampering for their lives.
Jack Looney
Among the problems that plagued Crozet in the building of the tunnel were the limitations of hand drills, which resulted in only 755 feet being achieved in the first year; a large spring necessitating pumps and siphons; and frequent rockfalls from the tunnel roof.
The Blue Ridge Tunnel proved almost impervious to the hand drills. A year and eight months of labor cutting into both ends achieved a total of only 755 feet. As if a lumbering pace and rockslides weren’t enough, the watery burst of a large spring complicated matters as well, causing workers to man pumps night and day, a problem that persisted until Crozet engineered a 2,000-foot siphon down the mountain.
Christmas Day 1856, brought Crozet a long-awaited holiday present. Boring crews that had begun on either side of the Afton Mountain met on that day. Crozet’s measurements were on the money—the deviation between the bore holes was a mere 15 centimeters. The remaining three tunnels had opened for business earlier that same year.
But train traffic on the Blue Ridge Tunnel was still a way off, and would not open to rail traffic until 1858. Masons would have to install 150,000 bricks to arch the Blue Ridge Tunnel before rail traffic was allowed access. A rumor circulated that the tunnel was not wide enough to allow train access. This was false. Crozet asserted that in no place was the tunnel less than 14 feet wide, which was the accepted standard. In fact, much of the tunnel was 15 to 18 feet wide. The Blue Ridge Tunnel would soon begin 86 years of service at its present width.
Paul Germaine
Masons had to install 150,000 bricks to the arch the Blue Ridge Tunnel before rail traffic was allowed access.
Crozet also faced the challenge of what he saw as uninformed critics. With the Blue Ridge almost tamed, he stated that, “I will continue to give my attention to the winding up of this business, if you desire it…. I would greatly prefer that my connection with the works should end with the year.”
With Crozet’s resignation, the Virginia Central took over the completion of the tunnel. The first passenger train navigated the Blue Ridge Tunnel on April 13, 1858, with Captain Jarrett Gooch serving as conductor.
Tom Stiles | skyshots.com
This aerial view provides only a hint of the rise and scope of the mountain that Claudius Crozet’s engineering conquered.
Crozet’s work had subjugated the Blue Ridge, mastering the granite impediment that separated Virginia’s eastern and western sides. Total expenditure for the four tunnels was $1.69 million, with the Blue Ridge Tunnel accounting for nearly $500,000 of that total. This proved to be a bargain, as the Blue Ridge and Greenwood Tunnels would provide service until 1944. In that year, excavation of a replacement tunnel at Rockfish Gap was completed to allow for larger trains. Crozet’s tunnel would fall dark and quiet for several decades until a $4 million investment was made to convert the Blue Ridge Tunnel to a hiking trail.
The public was allowed to start walking through the old tunnel in November, 2020. Today the tunnel is a valued historical resource and recreational asset for the counties of Nelson and Augusta.
The Brooksville Tunnel was in operation until the 1970s. The Little Rock Tunnel is still used for rail traffic today.
Col. Edwin L. Dooley of VMI, the co-author of the biography, “Claudius Crozet, French Engineer in America, 1790–1864”, published in 1989, was a featured speaker at Crozet Library in 2014. In his speech, he highlighted a number of Crozet’s contributions: “Crozet is one of Virginia’s most important historical figures. His contributions to transportation continue to this day because roads and railroads follow routes surveyed by Crozet. He brought the practice of engineering according to science to the U.S. In Virginia, his work was mainly west of the Blue Ridge [before West Virginia was formed]. He mapped Rt. 60, started canals, and became an advocate for railroads. It’s incredible what he did…”
Take a Walk Through History
The Blue Ridge Tunnel, with ties to Virginia’s Nelson, Augusta and Albemarle counties, is 4,273 feet long, unlighted and at a relatively constant temperature of between 55 and 60 degrees. Access is at two trailheads—one in Augusta County and the other in Nelson County. The full Blue Ridge Tunnel Greenway is 2.25 miles, making for a 4.5-mile out-and-back. For maps and more information: nelsoncounty.com/blue-ridge-tunnel
Claudius Crozet: Talented, Difficult, Mercurial
Crozet’s departure from his captaincy in the French Army proved to be a precursor to many such steps across a career that saw contemporaries characterize him as irritable and intolerant of anyone who disagreed with him:
• Crozet’s background as a French Army engineer gave him entre to a position of professor of Engineering at West Point Military Academy in New York in 1816, but feuding with administrators, along with his disdain for cold winters, led to his resignation in 1823.
• In that year he was hired by the Virginia Public Works Board as principal engineer, where his recommendation to create a transportation system akin to New York’s Erie Canal was met with a level of resistance that saw the board cut his salary. Crozet resigned in 1831.
• In 1832, he became state engineer for Louisiana, left that post two years later to become a civil engineer for New Orleans, but soon left that post as well.
• In 1837, he was rehired by the Virginia Board of Public Works, only to see the General Assembly eliminate his position in 1843.
• From 1837 to 1845 Crozet served as the first president of the board of directors of Virginia Military Institute.
• Between 1845 and 1849, he was principal of Richmond Academy.
• In 1849, he became chief engineer for the Blue Ridge Railroad Company (later part of the Chesapeake & Ohio), where he undertook the engineering of the Blue Ridge and three other tunnels, though he resigned that post just prior to completion of what is now the Crozet Tunnel.
• In 1857 he became principal assistant engineer in the building of an aqueduct to secure fresh water for Washington, DC.
• When that position was eliminated in 1859, he became chief engineer of the Virginia & Kentucky Railroad, but construction stopped when Kentucky did not secede from the Union.
Claudius Crozet died at the home of his son-in-law in Chesterfield County, Virginia on January 29, 1864, at the age of 75.
The story above first appeared in our March / April 2022 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!