Markers of History

My inner proof­reader is scream­ing at this one. Because I’m 99% sure that they messed up on word choice in the sub­head­ing of this marker from the Path of History and I cringe to see so promi­nent an error on a marker about history.

Path of History
Naval Shipyard Museum

Location: High St & Water St, Portsmouth, VA, 23704 in front of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum.

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:00pm

Transcription of marker:

Naval Shipyard Museum
Formally Norfolk County Ferries Maintenance Building

Constructed in 1919, this build­ing was used as a main­te­nance build­ing for the Norfolk County fer­ries. From 1636 to 1955 the fer­ries pro­vided ser­vice for pas­sen­gers and their var­i­ous modes of trans­porta­tion across the Elizabeth River between Norfolk and Portsmouth. The fer­ries were dis­con­tin­ued in 1955, but were re-established in 1983 for pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion only. The build­ing has been home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum since 1963, when the orig­i­nal museum was moved from inside the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The museum researches, pre­serves and pro­motes the his­tory of the City of Portsmouth, Norfolk Naval Shipyard and the armed forces in Hampton Roads.

My impres­sions: HIRE A PROOFREADER!!! (Sorry, was I yelling?) I mean, there’s a minis­cule chance that the build­ing is “offi­cially named” based on its prior func­tion, but I do want to assume that 99% chance that it’s the wrong word, take some white-out and change the word to Formerly. But since I’d pre­fer not to be arrested, I’ll restrain myself.

There’s a lot of over­lap with the ferry marker I vis­ited in Norfolk ear­lier in the day, of course, because the for­mer func­tion of the build­ing relates to the same ferries.

Notes for future snar­fers: This is very close to the High Street ferry land­ing. Note that there are two other mark­ers in front of the museum: one for the Blue Star Memorial By-Way (right next to this one, in front of the museum) and another for the Revolutionary War at Portsmouth (fac­ing Water St, par­al­lel to the side of the museum).

Markeroni sta­tus: Awaiting fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the Path of History before sub­mit­ting to Markeroni.

One meta note: Having filled up the front page with plenty more left to come, I’m going to slow down the pace of post­ing, so you’ll hope­fully see two or three posts per day, until I catch up with all the sights I saw yes­ter­day, so come back tomor­row for more marker fun!

Path of History
Seaboard Air Line Railroad

Location: Near inter­sec­tion of High St & Water St, near the High St ferry land­ing, Portsmouth, VA 23704.

Visited: June 1, 2009, 12:55pm

Transcription of marker: The Portsmouth & Roanoke Railroad was incor­po­rated in March 1832 and began oper­a­tions in July 1834 when the first train, pulled by horses, ran a full cir­cuit from Portsmouth to Suffolk. A loco­mo­tive replaced the horses later that year. By late 1836, the full line run­ning to Weldon, N.C., was com­pleted. In 1846 the line was reor­ga­nized as the Seaboard & Roanoke and even­tu­ally became the Seaboard Air Line Railroad.

This build­ing at High Street Landing served as the Seaboard Air Line Railroad head­quar­ters and sta­tion from 1894 through 1958, when the com­pany moved its oper­a­tions to Richmond, Va. Since that time, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad has sur­vived a num­ber of merg­ers, exist­ing today as CSX Transportation.

My impres­sions: My imag­i­na­tion wasn’t caught ter­ri­bly by this one. I think it may be because of grow­ing up in Canada, where a large part of our national myth is about being tied together by one rail­road that the smaller rail­roads (both here and back home) don’t seem ter­ri­bly impor­tant to me. The men­tal pic­ture of horses pulling a train (which is inter­est­ing to me) gets drowned out by the minu­tiae of cor­po­rate names and mergers.

I do won­der about the place­ment. The build­ing there was head­quar­ters. Why? There is no evi­dence today of rails in close prox­im­ity to the build­ing. (Of course, there isn’t much rea­son for HQ to be right on the rail line, is there?) Was it the water­front location?

Further read­ing: “Seaboard Air Line Railroad,” Wikipedia.

Markeroni sta­tus: I will attempt to gather more infor­ma­tion about Portsmouth’s Path of History before sub­mit­ting this for inclu­sion in the Markeroni database.