William G. Thomas III, et. al., The Countryside Transformed

The Countryside Transformed:
The Eastern Shore of Virginia, the Pennsylvania Railroad,
and the Creation of a Modern Landscape

William G. Thomas III, University of Nebraska
Brooks Miles Barnes, Eastern Shore Public Library
Tom Szuba, University of Virginia

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Essay Sections:

The Railroad and the Modern Landscape:

Chapter Sections:

Introduction
Mapping the Waters
Postal Service
Imagining the Railroad
The Pennsylvania Railroad Comes

Postal Service:

At the same time, post offices expanded their reach and operation. The post office network was more uniformly managed and provided in the early 1880s a powerful enhancement of the Eastern Shore’s reach into the modern markets of information, commerce, and capital as well as a reconceptualization of space and time. Patronage politics combined with the coming of the railroad, quickening commerce, and a growing population to expand dramatically postal service on the peninsula. Between 1881 and 1884 the importunities of U.S. Senator William Mahone persuaded the administrations of Republican presidents James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur to increase from forty-four to sixty-seven the number of post offices in Accomack and Northampton counties. The advent of the railroad in 1884 further stimulated the establishment of post offices both along the tracks and out in the countryside. By 1917, the number of post offices in the two counties had climbed to eighty-eight.25

Expansion of Post Offices along the Eastern Shore from 1793-1917

By the turn of the century, postmasters recorded postal routes and areas of service on a map of concentric circles showing the extensive and intensive networks they oversaw. The maps represented new, modern understandings of space, time, and service.

Post offices opened every community on the Eastern Shore to the doings of the world. On Chincoteague in March 1884, thirty-three Northern daily newspapers arrived each day at the post office. Later that year (the year the railroad made its way down the peninsula), the citizens of the hamlet of Muddy Creek campaigned for a post office with feverish dedication. They cleared timber for a new road to Cattail Neck, and a Democratic storeowner in hopes of attracting the good favor of the new administration renamed his establishment "Cleveland" for the President-elect. Post offices established nodes on a greater network and, in effect, helped attract roads, banks, hotels, services, stores, and residences. Once a place obtained postal service, its citizens were equally determined not to lose it or see it curtailed. When one small town had its mail service to the Accomack County courthouse cut to three days a week, its citizens demanded "equal rights."26

Timeline Featuring Cumulative Number of Post Offices on Eastern Shore, 1793-1910

The post office's effects on the ways local citizens understood their landscape were not confined to the race for town status. Postmasters, responding to federal requests, filled out annual reports on their offices' activities and reach. These reports grew in sophistication and detail over the 1880s and 1890s. By the turn of the century postmasters recorded postal routes and areas of service on a map of concentric circles showing the extensive and intensive network they oversaw. New understandings of space, time, service, and the perceived "rights" of citizens who interacted with the post office mixed in these years, yielding a modern world built on tangible and intangible networks.27

Mapping the Waters

Imagining the Railroad

Essay Sections: