Claudius Crozet (1789-1864) was born in France and grew up in Paris. In June 1816, he married, and the newlyweds soon sailed to the United States. Before immigrating at age twenty-six, he had studied engineering in France, attended artillery school, and served in Austria, Holland and Russia as an officer in Napoleon's army. Shortly after arriving in America, he was appointed assistant professor of engineering at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. Seven years later, he became chief engineer for Virginia's Board of Public Works and used the position to campaign for railroads rather than canals as the best way to link tidewater Virginia with the state's western border at the Ohio River. Canal investors in the General Assembly forced his resignation in 1831, but by 1837 railroads were in the ascendancy, and the Board rehired him. With assistants, he sought the best railroad route across the Blue Ridge Mountains and found it at Rockfish Gap. Budget cuts ended his position in 1842, yet in 1849 the Board hired him a third time to design the Blue Ridge Railroad. Construction began in late 1849 and continued for a decade. Petitions from local citizens calling for investigation of his management appeared in 1853, returned in 1856, and erupted multiple times in 1857. He resigned in January 1858, and the permanent Blue Ridge Railroad opened on April 13, 1858. It is unknown whether he ever rode as a passenger along those tracks or saw daylight at the end of the Blue Ridge Tunnel he had designed.