Markers of History

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.