Newport News
No place on the Peninsula benefited more from the completion of the C&O's Peninsula Subdivision than southeastern Warwick County, soon to become better known as Newport News. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway became one of the country's wealthiest as West Virginia coal moved eastward to the coal piers. The coal volume of the C&O, combined with that of the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) shipping from Lambert's Point and that of the later-completed Virginian Railway (VGN) at Sewell's Point turned the harbor of Hampton Roads, the East Coast of the United States' largest ice-free port, into the largest coal export point in the world by 1915.
Collis P. Huntington and his associates set developing the tiny unincorporated community at Newport New Point. His Old Dominion Land Company built the landmark Hotel Warwick, opened in 1883, which played a significant role in the development of the city. The hotel dominated the landscape, and was the civic and commercial center of the area during its early years. The first bank at Newport News, the first newspaper, the U.S. post office, the federal customs office, and even the municipal government of Warwick County were each located within the Hotel Warwick, at least for a time. It was also the site in 1886 of the organizational meeting for the Chesapeake Dry Dock and Construction Company. The latter evolved into the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company.
For a brief time, Warwick County shifted the location of its county seat to Newport News from the historic location at Denbigh, where it had been situated since colonial times. However, the growth at Newport News was such that, in 1896, it became one of only two Virginia localities to ever become an independent city from Warwick County without the additional stepping-stone of first becoming an incorporated town. (In the aftermath of that event, the county seat was returned to Denbigh. However, in 1958, voters of both communities chose to reunite, consolidating Newport News with the rest of the former county into an even bigger single independent city, one of the largest in Virginia in land area.)
See also: Newport News, Virginia and Warwick County, VirginiaRead more about this topic: Peninsula Extension
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