Claude "Claudius" Crozet (December 31, 1789 – January 29, 1864) was a soldier,educator, andcivil engineer.^[1]

Claudius Crozet
Born	(1789-12-31)December 31, 1789 Villefranche, France
Died	January 29, 1864(1864-01-29) (aged 74) Virginia,Confederate States of America
Occupation(s)	Civil engineer,Educator
Known for	Chief engineer of theVirginia Board of Public Works, including theBlue Ridge Railroad

Crozet was born inFrance and trained as an artillery officer and civil engineer. After the defeat of Napoleon's army, he emigrated to the United States in 1816 and joined theU.S. Army to teach at the U.S. Military Academy atWest Point.^[2]

After resigning his commission in 1823, he took a job with theVirginia Board of Public Works and oversaw the planning and construction ofcanals,turnpikes,bridges andrailroads inVirginia, including the area which becameWest Virginia during theAmerican Civil War (during which Crozet sided with theConfederate States of America). Crozet also helped found theVirginia Military Institute in 1839 and earned a nickname as the "Pathfinder of the Blue Ridge."

Claudius Crozet was born inVillefranche-sur-Saône,Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France on December 31, 1789 to Pierrette Varion Crozet and her husband, wine merchant François Crozet. His mother died when he was a boy, and his father moved to Paris in 1800 with Claude and two siblings. Claude secured permission to attend theÉcole Polytechnique in 1805. He studied engineering (including bridge-building) as well as military matters, and graduated as sub-lieutenant on October 1, 1807. Crozet then graduated from the Imperial Artillery School inMetz, and received a commission as a second lieutenant on June 9, 1809. Thus, he served in the French Army underNapoleon Bonaparte, and won a promotion to captain on July 22, 1812 during Napoleon's invasion ofRussia.

At theBattle of Borodino in September 1812, Captain Crozet was taken prisoner, but released in 1814 and returned to duty in the French army.^[3] Napoleon abdicated in April 1814, but returned to power about a year later, was defeated at theBattle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815 and surrendered about a month later. Crozet resigned from the French military on April 11, 1816.

On June 7, 1816, inParis, Crozet married Agathe Decamp, and they would have daughters Agatha and Claudia Crozet Mills and a son (Alfred) before her death in March 1861.^[4]

In the fall of 1816, Crozet and his bride immigrated to theUnited States.^[5] Almost immediately after arriving, Crozet began work as a professor of engineering at theU.S. Military Academy atWest Point, New York.^[6]

While at West Point, Crozet is credited by some as being the first to use the chalkboard as an instructional tool. He also used the "Elementary Course of Civil Engineering", translated from the course of M. J. Sganzin at theÉcole Polytechnique, designed several of the buildings on the campus, and publishedA Treatise on Descriptive Geometry.Thomas Jefferson referred to Claudius Crozet as "by far the best mathematician in the United States."^[7]

In 1823, Crozet was elected Principal Engineer and Surveyor for theVirginia Board of Public Works.^[8] He resigned from his duties at West Point, and brought his wife and two children (a boy and a girl) with him to live inRichmond, Virginia.

Virginia's Board of Public Works was very active in promoting the development of canals, roads, and railroads. His work included approving various proposals and determining their engineering feasibility. At the time, Virginia extended all the way from theAtlantic Ocean to theOhio River and was the largest state east of theMississippi River. It included what is now the State ofWest Virginia. Crozet worked on hundreds of transportation projects, such as theNorthwestern Turnpike.

Typical of his many projects of this nature was theChesterfield Railroad, the first in Virginia, the plans of which he examined before Board of Public Works funds were approved. It began operations in 1831.

In 1832, Crozet left Virginia to work inLouisiana. However, he returned to his old job in Virginia in 1837 to work on roads, canals, railroads and other points of necessity for the state. By this time, some railroads were already under construction and the canal system had reached its potential. He left office in 1843 after losing support of canal owners when he correctly forecast the future advantages railroads would hold for Virginia. Authoring textbooks on highway, railroad and aqueduct design, his 1848 map of the entire state was the first since the one prepared byPeter Jefferson, father of Thomas Jefferson, over a century earlier.

Crozet was one of the founders ofVirginia Military Institute (VMI) atLexington, Virginia, a major training institution for engineers and militia officers for Virginia and the South. When VMI opened in 1839, Crozet was the architect of the college's academic program and military organization. At its first meeting, the members of the VMI Board of Visitors elected Crozet president of the Board, a position he held for six years (while remaining the state's Chief Engineer).

However, his varied duties meant Crozet did not reside in Lexington, Virginia. In 1840, he and his family and five enslaved people lived in Richmond, Virginia.^[9] Ten years later, he and at least two much younger engineers boarded with plantation owner John T. Cocke inAlbemarle County, Virginia.^[10]

In 1839, Crozet surveyed theBlue Ridge Mountains and determined that the best way to allow theBlue Ridge Railroad, an extension of theVirginia Central Railroad, to cross the mountain would be through a series of fourtunnels (from east to west:Greenwood Tunnel,Brookville Tunnel, Little Rock Tunnel, andBlue Ridge Tunnel) nearRockfish Gap at Afton Mountain. The 4,273 feet (1,302.4 m) long Blue Ridge Tunnel was opened in 1856, although rail service did not begin until April 1858. At that time, it was the longest tunnel in the United States and one of the longest in the world. Dug a decade before the invention ofdynamite it was considered to be an "engineering wonder of the world" and was less than a half-foot (15.2 centimetres) off perfect alignment, as construction had proceeded from either end. Upon completion of the tunnels in 1858, the Blue Ridge Railroad ceased to exist, becoming a part of the Virginia Central Railroad.

During theAmerican Civil War, Confederate GeneralThomas Stonewall Jackson, a former instructor at VMI, used Crozet's tunnel to transfer his "foot cavalry" (comparable to arapid deployment force today) from theShenandoah Valley to the east side of the Blue Ridge quickly, to the puzzlement and consternation of Union military leaders.

In 1868, the Virginia Central Railroad was merged with theCovington and Ohio Railroad to create theChesapeake and Ohio Railway; the original tunnel served until it was replaced with a different alignment in 1944. Perhaps as mute testament to Crozet's extraordinary skills, despite advances in technology from the 1850s, the "new" mid 20th century tunnel was 4 feet (121.9 cm) off-center, in comparison with only 6 inches in Crozet's earlier project.

Crozet died in January 1864 at the residence of his daughter and son-in-law, as the Confederacy was losing the Civil War, but more than a year before its defeat. He was initially buried near his wife and children inShockoe Hill Cemetery, but in 1942 his remains were reinterred in theVirginia Military Institute cemetery.^[11] Hundreds of plans and drawings which he oversaw have been retained in the archives of theLibrary of Virginia.

The town ofCrozet, Virginia was named in his honor in 1870.^[7] The originalBlue Ridge Tunnel was converted into a "rails-to-trails" project sponsored byNelson County in 2020 and is the third-longest pedestrian tunnel in the United States.

VMI also named its dining hall in his honor, so cadets sometimes affectionately call it "Club Crozet".

Notes

Bibliography

• Couper, William (1936),Claudius Crozet: Soldier-Scholar-Educator-Engineer (1789-1864); Charlottesville: Historical Publishing Co. See alsoSouthern Sketches, Number 8, first series.
• Hunter, Robert F., and Edwin L. Dooley (1989),Claudius Crozet, French Engineer in America, 1790-1864; Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, Print.
• Hunter, R. F. (1963). Turnpike Construction in Antebellum Virginia. Technology and Culture, 4(2), 177-200.

• The Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike in West Virginia was designed by Claudius Crozet