Pleasant Green and Wayland's Crossing

The settlement that became Crozet was originally Wayland's Crossing, named for the Ficklin-Wayland farm at "Pleasant Green," a property east of the modern village. Claudius Crozet, surveying the railroad's path through the mountains in the late 1840s, reportedly lodged at Pleasant Green during his work.

The crossing was informal: a few farms, a mill, a road junction, the railroad tracks running through. No depot, no official name, no recognition. The Miller School of Albemarle, established 1874 a few miles south through the posthumous philanthropy of Samuel Miller, was the area's most institutional structure for decades.

The crossing's anonymity ended in 1876 when the C&O Railway announced the new station and chose to name it for the engineer who had cut the tunnel that made the rail line viable in the first place.