Chesapeake Western Railway Company Records

The origins of the Chesapeake Western Railway Company date back at least to 1871, when the Washington, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railroad was chartered in Virginia as a narrow-gauge railroad to run from Washington, D.C., through Elkton, Harrisonburg, and Bridgewater, Virginia to Cincinnati, Ohio. Virginians bought stock in the coporation, including many people in Rockingham County; rights of way were purchased and railbed grading began. Like similar ventures of the time, the goals of the company never bore fruit, and work halted in 1874.

In 1892, a group of promoters including Jedediah Hotchkiss incorporated to build a railway to carry coal from West Virginia mines to Gloucester Point, Virginia. Initially called the Chesapeake, Shendun, and Western Railroad, the name was quickly changed to Chesapeake & Western Railroad. Using part of the old WC&StL right-of-way, and with $150,000 from the city of Harrisonburg to ensure that the railroad would pass through it, a 26-mile single-track, standard-gauge line was completed from Elkton to Bridgewater and began operating on March 23, 1896. In the next few years, substantial C&W stock was purchased by New York investor Thomas Stokes, who hoped to develop the coal mines in western Rockingham County but became mired in financial difficulties. His brother, W.E.D Stokes, purchased control of the C&W and also organized a new railroad, the Tidewater and West Virginia, in 1900. The Tidewater changed its name in 1901 to the Chesapeake Western Railway, leased the CW line for 99 years, and in 1902 completed 13 miles of rail from Bridgewater to the new town of Stokesville in North River Gap. Trains carried passengers as well as freight between Elkton and Stokesville. Plans were drawn up to continue the line into West Virginia but were not implemented.

For just over a decade, Stokesville boomed as timber, tanbark, and to a much more limited extent, coal, in the area were exploited. Stokes operated the CW with offices in Harrisonburg until his death in 1926. His estate continued to operate the railway until 1938. In 1928, the line from Mount Solon to North River Gap was abandoned for financial reasons. In 1933, the nine miles from Bridgewater to Mount Solon were also dropped. When the Stokes' heirs put the CW up for sale in 1938, Don W. Thomas, a former Norfolk & Western Railroad employee who had been the general manager of the CW since 1926, fought a bid from Japanese scrap metal buyers and bought the line. In 1943, Thomas also bought the Baltimore & Ohio's Valley Road of Virginia line which rean between Harrisonburg and Lexington. The line south of Staunton was taken up and sold for scrap, but the road between Harrisonburg and Staunton was improved and became an important link in the CW system because of the connection with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad at Staunton. The CW linked with the Norfolk & Western at Elkton.

In 1954, the Norfolk & Western Railroad purchased CW, but the name was retained and was operated as a separate corporation. By about 1980, however, little or no rolling stock carried the CW logo any longer. Norfolk & Western and the Southern Railway Company merged as Norfolk Southern Corporation on June 1, 1982. Not long after that merger, a five-alarm fire burned the CW office located at Chesapeake Drive in Harrisonburg on July 28, 1982, and company offices and operations were eventually absorbed by the NS. Five miles of track east of Bridgewater were removed in 1988. The CW under the control of NS serves as the Harrisonburg area's poultry feed supplier passing through the campus of James Madison University daily.