VPM Documentaries | The Tunnel

>>Funding for this program was provided in part by Virginia Tourism Corporation, Virginia Humanities, Claudius Crozet Blue Ridge Tunnel Foundation, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Father Corby Branch. (warm, languid Irish music) >>In 1850, a work crew of Irish immigrants began digging a railroad tunnel through the Blue Ridge Mountains. In 1858, the first train passed through that tunnel. In 1944, the tunnel was closed, but that was not the end of the story. Today, if you stand at Rockfish Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in front of you to the east is the Piedmont Region of Virginia. Behind you to the west is the Shenandoah Valley. Below you, 700 feet below you, is the Claudius Crozet Blue Ridge Railroad Tunnel. Hidden deep in the heart of the mountains, it has been waiting nearly 80 years to be discovered. This is the story of the creation and the recreation of the Blue Ridge Tunnel. >>When you walk up to that, it's just like a dream almost, you're walking through, you've gone through this, brought you across tracks, and then all of a sudden you see this opening on the east side, the bare, raw rock. And on the west, so often you come through, it's misty and it's misty inside the tunnel. And it's just beautiful. And the history of the Irish workers that came to this country, they were really the backbone and the workforce that did that most difficult and most dangerous and most poorly paid work. They were just desperate people, desperate to make a living, to survive. To recognize their contribution is another important aspect of this project. >>In 2001, the Nelson County Board of Supervisors initiated a project to reopen the tunnel for public use. >>This is the plans for Blue Ridge Tunnel Rehabilitation and Trail Project, the picture of the whole project, basically. Phase one starts here at Afton Depot, and then it follows the original alignment of the railroad 3,400 feet to the entrance to the tunnel on the east. Phase two is rehabilitating the tunnel, 4,200 feet of the tunnel itself. And then phase three would be a trail all the way up to there, which connects to Route 250. >>In 2014, Nelson County presented the project to engineering companies interested in bidding on the contract for restoration of the tunnel. >>We are gonna be visiting the tunnel here later. I will tell you that I first walked into the east portal, I wore some boots, it just came to my knees, but the water went over that boot and I had my boots full of water. So today I brought some hip boots to go in there. >>The trail to the tunnel's eastern portal is more than half mile and will require the construction of a gravel path and safety fencing. During World War II, the new tunnel was built just 50 feet from the old one to accommodate larger modern trains on the CSX Line. Although the rock walls are remarkably intact, there is considerable work to be done to control the flow of water that seeps in through the mountain. But an even bigger challenge will be the removal of two massive, 12-foot thick concrete bulkheads. They were installed in the 1950s to create a large chamber for the storage of propane. Unfortunately, the propane seeped out about as easily as the water seeps in. After several companies reviewed the project, FCE, Fielder's Choice Enterprises, was awarded the contract. >>The gentlemen who work in the tunnels, they're tunnel rats, rats in the sewer. Well, that's what you are in a tunnel. You're in a confined area and you better be a special individual to tolerate that. The boys would work with their dad in the tunnel. They would hold a star drill and turn it as their dad was hammering the star drill in in order to make a hole big enough to put the dynamite in, the black powder, I should say, not dynamite, black powder. We did not have dynamite at that period of time. So they used black powder, which was very temperamental, we might say. So there was a lot of boys that might have lost a finger, a hand, an arm, whatever it may be. So there was a little Irish boy standing up there and his dad was pounding a star drill and he was turning it and they got down to here and they said, "Okay, that's enough.

" Then they put black powder in the hole and a fuse on it. And boom, there it come out. I know the first time I walked in here, I got goosebumps. And I've been in many tunnels, but this just awe inspired me when I walked in here. You think back to 1850 and the technology they had, it's quite an engineering feat. There's just no way to describe it other than that. It was just, it was marvelous. >>In the 19th century, 215,000 miles of railroad track were laid in the United States, five times the length of today's interstate system. In Virginia, several different companies were laying track on both sides of the Blue Ridge. >>The privately-owned company, the Virginia Central Railroad, was working its way this direction from Richmond and was actually working on the other side of the mountain in Waynesboro heading towards Staunton and further west. But didn't want to take on the really risky business of getting through the mountains with the tunnels and the really heavy, heavy work that had to be done. So Richmond legislature decided to take it on. They hired Claudius Crozet as the chief engineer for the Blue Ridge Railroad, a 17-mile stretch from the Mechums River near what is now the town of Crozet, and he had to slowly climb along the eastern side of the mountains. There he built three other tunnels. The first tunnel was near the village of Greenwood, and it was actually the first tunnel completed. It too was brick arched all the way through. As you work your way along the side of the mountain, he came to another area that was called the Brooksville Hill, one of the more difficult tunnels. The rock and the stone kept slipping, falling down on top of the Irish workers below. And then just before they got to what is today the town of Afton, was then called and still called today, the Little Rock Tunnel, it's only 100 feet long. And then it slowly climbs the rest of the way and it turns and penetrates through the mountain and comes out in the great Shenandoah Valley. And then on down to the South River in Waynesboro. That was the 17-mile stretch that Claudius Crozet was in charge of. >>Claudius Crozet was born in France, served as an engineer under Napoleon, immigrated to America, taught math at West Point, and served as the first president of the Virginia Military Institute. >>Educated at the Ecole Polytechnique. And that was the start of the time when they switched to a military system, and that influenced everything he did the rest of his life. And he used that later at West Point and then later as one of the founding fathers of VMI. And that's one of the ways best to describe him, extremely disciplined. You would love to have him working for you. You may not like to work for him quite as well. >>Crozet's great achievement was the design and construction of the Blue Ridge Tunnel, nearly a mile in length. >>The rock was extremely difficult, and it took quite a bit of time with the technology they had at the time. They worked in terms of feet per month, maybe 19, 20 feet drive per month for advancing the face. That's very slow. Again, that's why it took eight to complete. The longest tunnel in North America at that time. It was a notable achievement, and it remains the longest tunnel driven by hand drilling and black powder explosives. So they had a smaller tunnel near the crown, and they drilled horizontally there into the face. That left a bench behind the rest of the tunnel that they could drill vertically in. It's easier to drill vertically than horizontally. >>On the east side, you have the raw, rough rock, because the stone was so hard, it didn't need any support. Whereas on this side, he'd started blasting in and the rock and the earth above started caving in. And so they had to spend time and effort building timbering and then behind the timbering would be the brick masons coming. And so this end of the tunnel is all brick arched. >>It's lined with brick because of instability of the rock. And that's one of our major challenges in converting this from an industrial project, a railroad tunnel, to a civilian rails-to-trails project. So that's part of the next phase of repair, renovation, and making the tunnel safer. >>It's just a wonderful experience to bring people for the first time into the tunnel. And what I've always noticed is there's a lot of laughter and fun and excitement as we start in. And then it gets very quiet, the whole group becomes very quiet as they've walk further and further into the tunnel and it gets darker and darker. And there's just something that takes over you and you feel a kind of an eerie sense. >>The Irish would come in here and then they blasted the rock and then loaded it up on to carts and brought all the rock out through the tunnel. >>How long did it take the Irish to build the tunnel? >>It took them a full eight years to blast through the mountain side to make this tunnel. >>Do you know how many people worked on the tunnel? >>There was a crew of about 100 and some on this side, 100 and some men working on this side, and 100 men on the other side. And they working to meet in the middle. And we know that when the cholera came through in 1854, it killed 40 of the Irishmen that were working on both sides of the tunnel. Yes, dear? >>What's cholera? >>Cholera is a disease that we know a lot about now, but back then it was a disease that they were afraid of. >>So, do they sleep here overnight? >>They had to sleep here, yeah, in the shanties. They would do their work for eight, 10 hours, and then go back out to the shanty. >>Earlier you guys mentioned people digging, some archeologists digging. What have they found so far? >>Didn't find a whole lot, but bits and pieces, part of a China doll. And what archeology often looks for is trash, things that were thrown out. They were broken and they couldn't be repaired. We're hoping to find where the shanties were on the side of the mountain. >>The only thing that tells us people were here are these platforms, this is not natural. None of these platforms occurred based on erosion or anything. And historically, that would be the Irish laborers. And the railroad is right down below us. We're finding things that don't fit the local pattern. They fit the time period, but not what people were doing here. And the only thing that happens out of the ordinary at that time are hundreds of Irish immigrants flooding this very sort of tight space. They're not the biggest, but that's actually a white clay tobacco pipe for what they call cutties, short-stemmed clay tobacco. So they can keep it in their teeth while they're working. And it was an easy way to tuck it in their pocket, the tops of their hats. And you look at pictures of the 19th century, you'll always see a clay cutty, where in Ireland they call them dudine, that become part of the entire stereotype of the Patty. We look at these objects, not simply, you know, they smoked, so what? We look at the deeper meaning of it. In Irish tradition, it was a very social thing. It was people reaffirming, very tight bonds. And it becomes poignant out here on a mountain side. And that would be what we see through these artifacts is piecing together that culture or how they transform that culture to fit it into this sort of strange landscape for them. >>Good morning, sir! >>In 2015, the trail on the eastern side of the tunnel was completed and Allen Hale walked it with members of the Blue Ridge Tunnel Foundation, a group formed to build local and regional support for the project. But that marked only the end of phase one. Three years later, in 2018, work began on phase two, the rehabilitation of the tunnel itself, including the removal of the 12-foot thick bulkheads. (dynamite explodes) That day, backing out of the tunnel, something new appeared in the distance almost a mile away, a dot of daylight shining through the Blue Ridge mountains. It was an echo of another great day in the history of the tunnel. >>December 29th, 1856, Claudius Crozet was able to get both crews to actually meet in the middle. So they were finally able to report that "daylight now shines through the Blue Ridge mountains.

" And what was amazing, of course, was how close they were to each other. We have seen in writing that anywhere from an inch to six inches from center line to center line, that both sides met. Dennis Shanahan, the story goes that his son was passed through from one crew to the next. So a little baby who was the first one to actually make it through the tunnel. And this had been reported for so long, "They're not through yet, they're not done yet. Will they make it? Crozet doesn't know what he's doing.

" He got a lot of flack. >>As experienced as he was, there were really unexpected troubles. He didn't expect landslides, because they were unusual east of the Allegheny mountains. And he certainly didn't expect a cholera epidemic. He didn't expect brick makers to make inferior bricks. So there were all kinds of things slowing him down. >>Mary Lyons has examined documents from the Blue Ridge Railroad to write histories of the workers. This is a letter from John Kelly, the contractor hired by Claudius Crozet to build the Blue Ridge Tunnel. Kelly had immigrated in 1837 from County Cork, Ireland, and many of the later immigrants he hired to labor in the tunnel were also Corkians. His letter of March 8, 1853 was a plea for compensation for one of those workers, Michael Curran, who had lost one of his hands due to a premature explosion of powder inside the tunnel. The work demanded of the Irish was extremely dangerous. >>In April of 1853, there were cave ins at the tunnels that killed two Irishmen. The Irish went on strike an average of once a year, and in April, or did walkouts, and in April '53 they went on a three-week strike and actually managed to raise their wages. So if you were making $1.12, you got a raise to $1.25. Crozet was humiliated and embarrassed by this, and he immediately, all of his 1853 letters and early 1854, all about slave labor. "We've got to," in essence, he said, in his very flowery 19th century way, "get rid of the Irish laborers.

" Claudius Crozet approached the Irish as if he were still in the military. They were the privates and he was the general. So slave labor seemed to make a lot more sense to him. So George Farrow, who was his landlord at Brooksville Inn, said he could get him 40 to 50 able-bodied Negro men, as he put it. Renting out of slave labor was just everywhere. I mean, it was part of the economy that was built on slave labor. >>In the 19th century, enslaved workers, rented out by their owners, had built the University of Virginia and built railroads all over the state, including the 17 miles of the Blue Ridge Railroad. >>The enslaved men broke up rock into two-inch pieces of ballast and you prepare the track beds. They hand-built embankments, helping to build culverts, grubbing and clearing the land. James Williams was rented out to the railroad at the age of 12. He said they were rented like horses. At least 300 enslaved men and boys labored on the Blue Ridge Railroad. >>But until the contract with George Farrow, only the Irish had worked inside the tunnel. >>I would estimate 800 Irish men and boys labored in the tunnel. 13 died. They were either blown up blasting, accidental sliding of earth and being crushed by these work cars. So George Farrow insisted that the contract state, "Said Negroes shall not be employed in loading or blasting on said work.

" 33 enslaved men labored in the Blue Ridge Tunnel in 1854. All of them were listed on the payroll record as being floors. In other words, they removed the rocky debris after blast. >>Just a few weeks after the 33 enslaved men began working inside the tunnel, Claudius Crozet reported on an incident that happened on the western slope of the mountain, where a small group of enslaved workers were hauling dirt on flat cars, which the railroad men called flats. >>Brooksville, April 29th, 1864, to the Board of Public Works. Gentlemen, on Thursday the 6th, it appears that the engine man let at once the whole train down the grade. Some of our Negroes and some of R.P.

Smith's riding on the flats. In checking, probably too suddenly, the increasing speed of the train, the coupling pin next to the engine was broken. There being no brake upon any one of the flats, they descended the grade with a rapidly increasing velocity. The poor fellows would have certainly been safe but for the unaccountable circumstance of a flat having been left in the curve beyond the Waynesboro depot standing right in the main track. It produced a fearful collision by which two Negroes were killed. >>The names of the two men were Jerry and Thomas. Their owners demanded and received $1,200 in compensation for each man. Meanwhile, inside the tunnel, the 33 enslaved men hauled rock for the rest of 1854. But the contract with George Farrow was not renewed for 1855, and enslaved men were never used again inside the tunnel. >>They chose not to continue it. They'd had to compensate slave holders for the deaths of Jerry and Tom. And because of the famine, millions of Irish were flooding the country, and they were dispensable. If one man was blown to bits, there was another to take his place. As far as the tunnel itself, there's blood down in there, you know, and bits of bone. I mean, these guys didn't just fall over and have a heart attack, they were blown up. And that's important to me. I see it as a sacred place. And I sometimes think, "Well, those guys who were blown up, what would they want? Would they want their work to be shown, or would they want to say, 'Leave my bones alone'?

" I don't know the answer. >>On one level is a certain scariness and there's a certain sense of awe of being in here. Almost a sense that this is stolen property. Why are we here right now? We didn't build this. Those who built the tunnel, isn't it theirs? But I think the fact that we're in here communicates to them somewhere, maybe in unmarked graves around here, they're saying, "Well, it took the Yanks long enough to get here, but at least they're here now. And let's put a little pressure on them, a little psychic pressure on them to document us.

" There were hundreds of people in here at one time. They would sing songs, probably mostly in Irish. And they would tell stories to keep themselves from getting bored and also to keep away thoughts of what they had left in Ireland. The great hunger that they saw people in their counties starving to death. They decided, "Well, the most life giving and vital chance is to get on the shipboard. We've never seen the ship before in our lives. We've never been more than 10 miles from the family farm. And what do you mean it's a new world? What do they do over there?

" And so I think they came with a little bit of dreaminess, but they also came from a whole lot of fear because they saw what had been happening in their homeland. So it would have been not only the noise of the hammers in here and explosives going off, but there would have been snatches of fiddle, even in here at the end of the day, a fiddle struck by a wheel or a hornpipe or whatever he wanted to play. A lot of guys and the occasional wife, the occasional girlfriend would do some dancing. So I think it's safe to say that right here, where we're standing right now, you could easily have seen people dancing to a fiddler. (lively Irish music) >>In 2018, work continued on the western end of the tunnel, stabilizing the walls and repairing the brick work. For the restoration of the tunnel, Nelson County received a series of grants from the Commonwealth Transportation Board, with VDOT, the Virginia Department of Transportation, providing oversight. The grants were federal funds intended for non-traditional transportation projects. The budget for the entire project was $5.4 million. In 2020, phase three, the construction of a trail to the western portal, was completed and the tunnel and trail were opened to the public 19 years after the project was conceived. (poignant violin music) >>It's been a long haul, but it's just fantastic, I think, to be able to go through this tunnel. There's really nothing quite like this in the country. I mean, in terms of its design, its age and the way it's preserved. Aside from the brick near the portals, this is perfectly presented just as it was when the trains came through in 1858. >>Knowing what the Irish laborers went through is magical to me to know that I'm today walking through what took them so long to build and what they gave their blood, sweat and tears to create. And I'm really excited that we'll be able to open this tunnel up to the public and more and more of us can enjoy it. I know that everybody for the first time will marvel when they go through. And I think of lot of them, like me, will want to come back. (poignant violin music) (upbeat Irish music) >>Funding for this program was provided in part by Virginia Tourism Corporation, Virginia Humanities, Claudius Crozet Blue Ridge Tunnel Foundation, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians Father Corby Branch.

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VPM Documentaries | The Tunnel | Season 2021