Virginia News

The railroad that is being built throughout Virginia is creating economic opportunities. It will run through "seven southern States... [and] enlist not only the money of capitalists, but the enterprise of manufactures."

VIRGINIA NEWS. Railroad projected into VirginiaThe Monongahela Valley- A short line hela road reached West Brownsville on the 21st ultimo. A correspondent of the Mo- nongnhela Republican, referring to the projected southern road from Pittsburg to Newburn, as dismissed in the columns of the Commercial several months since, says : "To show its feasibility, take an ordinary map, follow the Monongahela river to its source, in Randolph county, W. Va., a distance of 150 miles (air line); then across a table-land of five miles to the head-waters of Elk river, which, in ten miles, will bring you to a gap or narrow cut in the Green brier mountain; a distance of five miles more will strike the Greenbrier river: following it to its junction with New river, the same distance to Newborn, on the Virginia and Tennessee railroad. Thus we have a distance of 275 or 300 miles, not across mountains but following the channels of nature ; not through a sterile region, but one as rich an minerals as productive in agriculture, and as thickly overspread with lumber as any now open to commerce and enterprise. That such a road will pay, you have but to name the main towns, already of considerathe size, such as Monongahcla Citv, Brownsville, Morgantown, Fairmont, Grafton Philhpi. Beverley, Huntersville, Lcwisourg and Newborn. Many of these places are directly dependent on Pittsburg, while the others, it supplied from Pittsburg, must be through very circuitous routes. But the opening up of a country already under a good slate of cultivation will be but a meagre item in comparison with the advantage of the States beyond. When a railroad of three hundred miles will connect with roads already built, running into seven southern States, we think the prospects sufficiently flattering to enlist not only the money of capitalists, but the enterprise of manufactures"

“Virginia News,” Reconstructing Virginia, accessed May 17, 2022, https://reconstructingvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1385.