Blue Ridge Country March/April 2022 - 33

or 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
F
BLUE RIDGE TUNNEL PROJECT:
Special Location & Opportunity
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
OPPOSITE PAGE: This daguerreotype of
Claudius Crozet, ca. 1855, is from the Virginia
Military Institute Archives. Crozet was VMI's
first president.
TOP: The photo is a 1916 postcard of the Blue
Ridge Tunnel, which opened in 1858.
ABOVE: 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.
MARCH/APRIL 2022 33
Blue Ridge Country March/April 2022

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