West Side Features Then & Now

West Side Features Then and Now. . Census records and other documents prove that hundreds of the Irish immigrants who worked on the Blue Ridge Railroad resided in Augusta county. Many rented houses or built shanties that lined both sides of the Rockfish Gap Turnpike. From the bottom of the slope in Waynesboro up to the Blue Ridge Tunnel, The Irish workers lived cheek-by-jowl with their jobs. Most of the west side contractors also used slave labor. Locations of the enslaved men’s dwellings are unknown., An arched culvert on the west side still funnels rainwater as it flows down the slope. In the Masonic tradition, only a master stonemason can inscribe the central stone, or keystone, that holds an arch in place. The keystone for the arched culvert features the Masonic symbols of a T-square and compass. It lacks the American custom of a “G” in the center space between the missing “G,” which stands for Great Architect of the Universe and for geometry, strongly suggests that a master European stone mason-in this case, an Irish man-carved the images on the keystone., The most impressive west side landmark is the arched west side portal of the Blue Ridge Tunnel. Expert Irish stonemasons most probably cut, dressed and installed the locally quarried stones in 1851. Claudius Crozet was precise in his instructions for the arch. He required stones “two-feet wide on the face” and “of the best available quality, with chamfered edges.”, On the old track are the remnants of a viaduct where the railroad passed over the turnpike. A handwritten payroll shows that the contractor mostly hired Irish men, including stonemasons, to build it in 1850. The viaduct was destroyed when the state altered the turnpike path and renamed it Highway 250 in 1935. Mountain Top Inn once stood at the western crest of Rockfish Gap. Claudius Crozet, chief engineer for the Blue Ridge Railroad, often boarded there while surveying the route of the future line in 1849. The inn burned in 1902. Construction of Interstate 64 in the early 1970’s obliterated the ruins., (captions) , On this later version of an 1865 map, Rockfish Gap Turnpike is labeled the ‘Charlottesville Road” and the Blue Ridge Railroad is labeled the “Chesapeake and Ohio RR.” Yellow dash line: Blue Ridge Railroad, West side. Yellow dash circle: Blue Ridge Railroad, West end. , Keystone of an arched culvert on the west slope of Rockfish Gap. , Claudius Crozet’s written directions for the west portal arch were exact: The stones should “tooth into the brick or stone work of the interior alternately 2½ and 3½ feet.”