Virginia’s newest tourist attraction opened this week in Afton. The Blue Ridge Tunnel was the longest tunnel of its kind when it opened in 1858.
Today, it’s part of a hiking trail that winds past streams, waterfalls and stories of the people who built this engineering marvel.
As you walk the half mile trail leading to the tunnel’s entrance, there are signs that tell how thousands of Irish men cleared and leveled the railway’s path 135 feet above the base of Afton Mountain.
“That slope was a problem from the very beginning right up until two days before the first train went through. Earth slides were just a very big problem,” says Mary E. Lyons, a historian who’s written four books about the tunnel and the people who blasted through rock to connect communities on either side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Thirty-three enslaved people were also put to work on the project, but their masters, who were paid a daily fee, insisted they be assigned the least dangerous jobs.
“They were seen as an investment to the slave holders," Lyons explains, "whereas Irish lives were expendable. Because of the great famine, millions of Irish were pouring into the country, and they wanted a job, so if an Irishman died, there was somebody to replace him.”
Each man cost the railroad between 75 cents and two dollars a day – so little that the workers often went on strike.
“The one year they did not go on strike was the year after the cholera epidemic of 1854,” Lyons says.
Housing for the workers was basic and even inside you could hear constant blasting, 700 feet below the peak of Rockfish Gap. Today, you hear waterfalls rushing down stone walls outside the tunnel, while inside water drips in places. There’s no artificial light, only a small promise shining from the other side according to Chris Ritter who came from Virginia Beach to walk the trail with her daughter Alex.
“When you get to the entrance, you can see the light, but it’s kind of deceiving because it takes a lot longer than you would think to reach it,” she says.
Clayton Ballowe and Shaam Singh were also intrigued by the walls themselves.
“You can see the stone change as you go through the mountain," he says. "You can see where the techtonic plates were pushed up over time.”
And Bob Kirchman, a graphic designer from Staunton, marveled at the work of Claudius Crozet, a French engineer who taught at West Point, then went on to plan and build the Blue Ridge Tunnel.
“This was pre-slide rule days, and they got their tunnel alignments within inches coming from two ends of this mountain!”
Nearly a hundred years later, when a new tunnel was built to accommodate larger locomotives, engineers with greater technology were not able to do as well.
Historian Mary Lyons has yet to make the trek from one side to the other.
“I have claustrophobia, so oddly I’m not ever going to be able to go through it,” she explains.
But as someone with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Ireland, she’s thrilled that the new trail is open, affording her a chance to post signs in honor of the men who built the railroad and those who died in the tunnel. She spent more than a decade collecting their names.
“Sam and Jerry and Tom were enslaved men killed on the west slope. The Irishmen killed inside the Blue Ridge Tunnel were a man named Branaman (no first name), Don Calden, Louis Cashman, Mike O’Connol, Dan Donovan, Michael Curran, Dennis Deisy, Thomas Devine, Morris Griffin, Mick Hurley, Thomas Mehaney, James Malone, Dan Sullivan I, Dan Sullivan II, Bryan Daly and Edward Wallace.”
Someday she hopes the Blue Ridge Tunnel will also be recognized as a Black History site. The tunnel – all 4,273 feet -- is open from dawn to dusk at no charge, but visitors are advised to bring their own flashlights.
Click here for more information on visiting the Blue Ridge Tunnel
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
