The Augusta County Historical Society (ACHS) will host an opening reception at the R.R. Smith Center for History and Arts to celebrate “Voices from the Blue Ridge Tunnel: When Men were Machines.”
The exhibit will introduce a new interactive railroad exhibit and showcase the works of the Staunton Augusta Art Center’s Arts in Practice Artists Residency, including Martin Gieger, The Dwell Collective, Sarah Jones, Joshua Yurges, Barbara Coyle Holt, Jill Kimbrough, Rob Mertens, Candace Christy, Noelia Nunez, Barbara Bernstein, Nicole O’Conner, Hsini Des and Angus Carter.
In early January of 1857, a newspaper article exclaimed excitedly that “daylight now shines through the Blue Ridge.” After nearly six years of chipping away at the brutally hard rock, sometimes at the rate of just nine inches a day, crews from the east and west had finally met in the middle. It took another 16 months of clearing rock, applying brick, and laying tracks before the first train chugged through the nearly mile-long Blue Ridge Tunnel connecting Nelson and Augusta counties.
ACHS’s inspiring new educational interactive exhibit “Voices from the Blue Ridge Tunnel: When Men were Machines” shines a light on the human story behind the Blue Ridge Tunnel construction – the historic railroad tunnel 700 feet under Afton Mountain. The tunnel that opened in 1858 for trains and reopened in 2021 (after two decades of cooperative restoration work) to walkers and bicyclists, was designed by French engineer Claudius Crozet, but it and the railroad were built by several thousand Irish immigrants and enslaved Blacks whose blood, sweat and lives (at least 14 Irishmen and 3 slaves died during construction) turned Crozet’s idea into one of the greatest engineering feats in the world at that time.
The exhibit is their story.
Using hand drills, picks, shovels, hammers, gunpowder and fuses, they opened up the mountain inch by inch, laid tracks, and otherwise worked to bring America’s newest transportation sensation—the railroad—into the southern Shenandoah Valley.
Visitors to the reception will be inspired by the amazing art on display in the SAAC galleries. Throughout August 2024, SAAC has played host to a number of artists working in a variety of media as part of the center’s Arts in Practice Artists Residency that transformed the Smith Center’s art galleries into studio space for artists to create and work. The reception is an opportunity for the public to see the finished results and meet the artists.
The ACHS exhibit has been made possible through generous support from Altria Client Services LLC, Augusta County Economic Development & Tourism, Augusta County Railroad Museum, Blue Ridge Tunnel Foundation, C&O Historical Society and Virginia Humanities.
The reception is free and open to the public on Friday, September 6, 2024, from 5 to 8 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.
The R.R. Smith Center for History and Art is 20 S. New Street in downtown Staunton.
Related stories:
Nelson County announces opening of Claudius Crozet Blue Ridge Tunnel Trail (augustafreepress.com)
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Rebecca Barnabi
