1856 Virginia Map: Early Railroads

[NW Mailing List]

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 7:44 AM Abe wrote:

> Maps are a Godsend for the historian. Today, while searching the Library
> of Congress for an 1856 issue of Scientific American, I ran across Charles
> W. Morse's General Atlas of the World (New York: Appletons, 1856.) That
> publication date almost coincides with the construction of the Virginia &
> Tennessee RR. Comparing the book's map of Virginia with what we know of the
> area today makes for some interesting comparisons. (Such as a projected
> railroad running from Christiansburg to Charleston [now West,] Virginia.)


It appears that most of the towns on the maps are county seats, so not
surprising Christiansburg was the anchor for the line to the northwest.
There was a charter for a railroad to build from Central (Radford) down the
New River to Charleston and beyond to provide another western source of
traffic to and from the port at Norfolk. That was the charter obtained by
the Norfolk & Western Railroad to start the line to the coal fields of West
Virginia.

Palionsburg in Botetourt County looks like an interesting place to find
also.

Bruce in Blacksburg
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