Mountain Hollows and Culverts

In addition to the difficult work of hand drilling and blasting the tunnels through the mountains, the railroad contractors had to fill in many ravines where mountain streams coursed down the hill across the path of the tracks.  To maintain the steady grade of the tracks, these hollows or ravines had to be filled with rock debris and earth, sometimes to a height of over a 100 feet and a length of 1,100 feet.  This involved hauling and dumping hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of material.  Typically these embankments continued to slip, and Crozet wrote many times of having to add more material before he was satisfied that the steel rails could be placed on the track beds.

The most difficult embankment was at Robertson Hollow which is located between the Brooksville Tunnel and the Little Rock Tunnel.  Before the tracks were in place, this location was difficult to reach with wagons and material.  Each winter the freeze and thaw conditions caused the fill to shift and slip downhill.  The embankment was widened several times to hold the additional material that had to be brought in to maintain the necessary height.

On the other side of the Brooksville Tunnel is an area known today as Dove Spring Hollow.  Crozet’s reports to Richmond called it Kelly’s Hollow, referring to the contractor John Kelly who won a number of contracts on the Blue Ridge Railroad and managed the largest number of Irish workers.  A local general store ledger noted that many of the Irish customers lived in Kelly’s Hollow.  Clann Mhór believes that for over eight years many Irish shanties were located near or within Kelly’s Hollow.

Before these embankments could be filled in, culverts where built to direct the mountain streams under the embankment.  Typically built of stone facing on four sides, these culverts varied in size and sometimes extended over a 100 feet in length.  Today, these old culverts can be seen with strong winter flows of water.

The culvert at Robertson Hollow, extended and reinforced over time

A double culvert at Kelly’s Hollow

The double culvert located at Goodloe’s Hollow

Stone culvert near Mechum’s Depot

Decorative culvert on the west side of the mountain near Waynesboro

Photos by Rhonda Roebuck and Dan Burke