Blue Ridge Country March/April 2022 - 35

ney 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.
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 stanDISCOVER
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Blue Ridge Country March/April 2022

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