Construction
The Blue Ridge Railroad was incorporated by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1849 with Claudius Crozet as chief engineer. Its purpose was to provide a crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains for the Virginia Central Railroad into the Shenandoah Valley.
The Virginia Board of Public Works, founded in 1816, supported numerous internal improvements in the state, owning part of the Virginia Central in stock as well as virtually all of the Blue Ridge Railroad.
A civil engineer of considerable skill, Crozet had identified the eventual route as early as 1839. Rail service reached Charlottesville by 1851; westward, the railroad closely followed the alignment of the ancient Three Notch'd Road.
To protect its investment and enable transportation, the State then incorporated and financed the Blue Ridge Railroad to accomplish the hard and expensive task of crossing the Blue Ridge mountain barrier to the west. Rather than attempting the more formidable Swift Run Gap, the state-owned Blue Ridge Railroad built over the mountains at the next major gap to the south, Rockfish Gap near Afton Mountain.
Overseen by Crozet, the crossing was accomplished by building four tunnels, including the 4,263-foot (1,299 m) Blue Ridge Tunnel near the top of the pass. With construction proceeding from either side a decade before the invention of dynamite, the complex was dug though solid granite with only hand drills and black powder. The tunnel was less than 6 inches (150 mm) off perfect alignment when it was holed through on Christmas Day 1856.
When completed, the Blue Ridge Tunnel was the longest in the United States and one of the longest tunnels in the world, a remarkable feat of engineering. It opened to rail traffic in April 1858, and was considered to be one of the engineering wonders of the modern world.
Read more about this topic: Blue Ridge Tunnel
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—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
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