In early 1850, hundreds of Irish famine immigrants, accompanied by relatives, arrived in the counties of Albemarle, Nelson, and Augusta to build the Blue Ridge Railroad and its four tunnels. Those working in the Blue Ridge Tunnel erected shanties near both portals, while men laboring on the remaining tunnels or along the tracks crowded with their families into rented houses on the descending slopes of Rockfish Gap. Life was difficult, with round-the-clock black gunpowder explosions creating almost unbearable noise and smoke, and death from faulty detonations or falling rock a constant risk. Pay for floorers began at $.75 a day and rose to $1.12 ½ after a strike in 1853, while headers and blasters rose to $1.25 a day, and blacksmiths and stonemasons earned $1.30 to $2.00 a day; wages rose again after more strikes, though workers then had to survive unpredictable periods with no pay. In 1854, a cholera epidemic swept through the shanties and killed thirty-three people, and in all 190 Irish workers on the Blue Ridge Railroad line died from disease, infection, or work accidents. In 1854, three slaveholders leased the labor of thirty-three men for work in the Blue Ridge Tunnel under a state contract requiring that they not be allowed near gunpowder loading or blasting; most were floorers earning $1.12 ½ a day, all payable to the enslavers. Several hundred more hired-out men performed backbreaking labor elsewhere on the line, clearing land, preparing track beds, hauling stones for culverts, breaking rock for ballast, placing riprap, firing bricks, and shoring up embankments, and three enslaved men died while laboring on the Blue Ridge Railroad. About 850 Irish men and boys worked in the Blue Ridge Tunnel during its construction, and although approximately 50 local men joined them from time to time, payroll records show that most left after a few months, while elsewhere on the line some local men remained employed for years.

Photo: Devry Becker Jones

Afton, Virginia · USA