The Virginia Blue Ridge Railroad

by Mary E. Lyons

In 1849, Virginia began a bold railroad expansion toward the Ohio River and its lucrative trade connections. The project’s plan covered 423 miles and called for piercing two mountain chains with three railroads. The Blue Ridge Railroad was the shortest of these but crossed the most mountainous terrain. At times, hired slaves, who prepared the tracks, and Irish immigrants, who blasted the tunnels, faced challenges that seemed almost insurmountable. Many were killed by explosions and falling rock. Those deaths often resulted in labor strikes. The unrest slowed progress and haunted chief engineer Claudius Crozet for seven years. In this first full-length history of the Blue Ridge Railroad, award-winning author Mary E. Lyons uses a wealth of historical documents to describe construction on what Crozet called “dangerous ground.”

Genres: Nonfiction

244 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 18, 2014

About the author

Mary E. Lyons, a former teacher and librarian, became a full-time writer in 1993. She is the author of nineteen books for young readers published by Scribner, Atheneum, Henry Holt, Houghton Mifflin and Oxford University Press.

Born and raised in the American South, Mary Lyons lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, Paul. Her publications for adults include The Blue Ridge Tunnel: A Remarkable Engineering Feat in Antebellum Virginia (History Press, 2014), The Virginia Blue Ridge Railroad (History Press, 2015), and Slave Labor on Virginia’s Blue Ridge Railroad (History Press, 2020).

Reviews

[Poptartk · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was well written and interesting—I grew up in the town closest to the west portal of the tunnel, and I believe it held a fascination for many of us who used to explore through the abandoned old (and no doubt much more dangerous than we realized) tunnel in our youth. I definitely recommend this to any and all of them.

I wish the second part, which is comprised of the author's historical articles about the tunnel published in a variety of periodicals prior to the advent of this book, had instead been incorporated into the main narrative. This would have cut back on repetition of salient facts and made the book even more compelling.

I also wish Lyons had gone into the fate of the tunnel after it was replaced by the "new" tunnel in the 1940s—including its partitioning into sections in an ill-conceived plan to use it to store natural gas.

Still, the focus of the book is the Irish workforce, and in that it succeeds admirably.

[Duane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm often unsatisfied by this kind of "micro-history", where I'm often left unsatisfied by the research or disappointed in the analysis. This is a welcome exception. The author clearly did a vast amount of research which she still was able to craft into a compelling and interesting narrative. If I were to criticize, I might suggest a little more about the decision the Commonwealth of Virginia made to spend the money on this big project. A minor quibble. I was particularly impressed with the way she included the stories of the Irish immigrants and enslaved people who worked on the project--and in many cases suffered and died on the project--without turning the book into a story of grievance. A really good book!

[M.K.B. Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and authoritative book in that the author explains the impact and the lives of Irish Americans in Antebellum Virginia. Sometimes, though, it reads like a text book and while quite interesting, lacks some of the heart one might want from a story about people facing such dire circumstances. Although not written as a narrative (I understand and appreciate the author's wish to stay true to the known facts), I wondered what someone like Eric Larson might have done with so compelling a story.

[William Rowe · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book focuses on the Irish workers and their families who built the tunnel with many speculations about what their lives in Ireland and Virginia. The author notes haw the Irish were starving, and then were on ships to America; who paid for their travel? There is nothing on the surveying and about three sentences on the geology. then ere is a long section about a cemetery.

It is not the book to read before visiting the Blue Ridge Tunnel.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a rather dry description of the tunnel and adjacent works construction history. Much of the book is about her research on the Irish workers, rather more like genealogy research. The Irish were not much for writing, so the source material was rather scant. Payrolls, census, store ledgers, reports by builder to his Board, etc. No photos of construction taken at the time. Still, the topic was of interest to me, so worthwhile reading.

[Ellie Syverud · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story of how the BR Tunnel was built especially in regard to the lives of the Irish immigrants who built it.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was just "OK" and pretty boring and repetitive. I'm really not sure why the author wrote this book - it was never explained.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Lyons has deftly woven together engineering, social history, and archeology in a moving account of the Blue Ridge Tunnel and the people who built it.

The story of this most amazing engineering feat--on a par with the Eiffel Tower and the Panama Canal--would be reason enough to pick up this book. Mary Lyons explains the business of blasting, buttressing and building with an engaging clarity that keeps you turning the page.

But this book is so much more than a story of an ambitious and privileged Virginia engineer, Claudius Crozet, and the tunnel he built.

Mary Lyons tells the story of the real builders of the tunnel--the Irish immigrants and the enslaved Virginians from local plantations who drilled and blasted through the nearly impenetrable rock. We learn of the seven children--mere boys--who handmade over 180,000 bricks for the tunnel. We learn of their battles with dangerous working conditions, low wages, and disease.

Like any great detective, she constructs the story from the bits and pieces available. While the engineers left letters and journals, the workers show up on census counts, church records, burial plots and occasional newspaper accounts. Her efforts are a tribute to the courage and tenacity of the those nineteenth century workers.