Three of the tunnels-the Brooksville, Greenwood, and Little Rock-were each under 900 feet in length. ![]() And Virginia put her hopes for that mammoth task in Claudius Crozet.Ĭrozet’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. 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.īut before this railroad could reach fruition, the Blue Ridge would have to be breached. 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 State Legislature became exasperated with his nagging and abolished his position of chief engineer in 1843.īut 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. ![]() 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.Ĭrozet did not suffer well those who lacked his vision of a railroad. 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. 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. When Napoleon was finally subjugated, Crozet quit the French Army, and in 1816 traveled to the United States.Īfter 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 was released from captivity and restored to his rank as Captain in the French army. As a young man, he enlisted in Napoleon’s army and was present at the collapse at Moscow, and fell into Russian hands. The task of vision, engineering and overseeing that mammoth task would fall to one of Napoleon’s captains, Claudius Crozet.Ĭrozet was born in 1789 near Lyons, France. 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.īut before this could occur, the barrier that was the Blue Ridge mountains had to be met and overcome. Crozet was VMI’s first president.įor the years after European settlement of the East Coast, the Appalachian Mountains had been an obstacle to commerce and further settlement. ![]() 1855, is from the Virginia Military Institute Archives. This daguerreotype of Claudius Crozet, ca.
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