Crozet: The town followed the man

Claudius Crozet put his tunnel on the map, but it took an Albemarle town to put him on the map.

The construction of the nearby Miller Manual Labor School (now known as just the Miller School) in 1875 prompted a desire for more links with the outside world and created the need for a way to bring construction materials to the site.

So the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad honored the school and provided a whistle stop. A year later, local farmers raised funds to build a depot, which they wanted to name "Farmers." But, according to Steve Meeks' Crozet, a Pictorial History, C&O railroad chief William Wickham said, "The name will be Crozet or nothing" to honor the French-born engineer of what was, for a month, the longest tunnel in the world.

The rest, as they say, is history.