The 1854 cholera epidemic

In the summer of 1854, a cholera epidemic swept through the labor camps along the Blue Ridge Tunnel construction route.

Cholera in nineteenth-century America was poorly understood. Germ theory was decades away, and the disease's connection to contaminated water supplies was not yet recognized. The labor camps were crowded, poorly drained, and shared water with the construction work itself, conditions that allowed cholera to spread rapidly once introduced.

The epidemic killed an unknown number of Irish workers and enslaved laborers in a single season. It contributed to the project's eventual death toll of approximately 189. Construction continued through and after the outbreak, on schedule.