Station Number: 160
Code Number: 0228
Telegraph Callsign: G
Gordonsville was named for Nathaniel Gordon. In 1787 Gordon
purchased 1,350 acres of land at the crossroads of the Fredericksburg
Road and the Richmond Road and built his house there. By 1794 he was
running a tavern and the site soon became a stage coach stop. The
Gordon establishment was famous for its chicken dinners. A Post
Office was established there in 1813, with Gordon as the first
postmaster. The new Post Office was called Gordonsville, though the
original plantation had been called Newville.
In the 1840’s Gordonsville was the western terminus of the Louisa
Railroad and the westernmost railhead in Virginia. Through the early
part of the 1850’s it was Orange County’s largest and most populous
town. This was due, in part, to the fact that the town was situated
at the junction of the Virginia Central and the Orange & Alexandria
railroads. In addition, the town stood at the intersection of two
major turnpikes from the valley of Virginia. This location gave
Gordonsville a strategic importance during the Civil War. Federal
Troops tried several times to capture the town, but it remained in
Confederate hands throughout the war.
During the 1860’s the Exchange Hotel in Gordonsville was a
luxurious stopping place for Virginia Central passengers. It was built
in 1859 and officially opened in 1860. During the
Civil War, the Exchange Hotel was converted into a military hospital,
the Gordonsville Receiving Hospital. Following the war, the hotel
flourished again. The Exchange Hotel still stands, and today is a
Civil War museum.
Gordonsville’s prosperity was adversely affected in the 1880’s when
the Virginia Midland (formerly the Orange & Alexandria) built a line
to the west of the town that provided a shorter route to
Charlottesville for traffic from the north. The line was begun in 1879 and the
first train ran from Orange to Charlottesville in January 1881. The towns of
Barboursville and Somerset on the new Virginia Midland line pulled trade away from
Gordonsville. As a result, the town’s fortunes declined, but it remained an
important passenger and freight station for the C&O.
In the late 1860’s and early 1870’s, Gordonsville women sold food
to C&O passengers through the open windows of the wooden cars. It was
possible for the hungry traveller to purchase biscuits, coffee, fruit,
hard boiled eggs, bread, pies, and chicken without leaving the train.
As a matter of fact, Gordonsville was known as the Chicken Leg Center
of the Universe in the 1870’s. As late as 1914, hungry travelers could
still buy food through the open windows of C&O trains. When dining cars
became popular, dressed chickens were stock piled at Gordonsville and
the Gordonsville name was used on menus.
In 1872, Scribner’s Monthly published an account of a train trip
along the C&O from Newport News to Allegheny. In it, Jed Hotchkiss describes
Gordonsville thus:
Here at mid-day the trains come from every point with an ear-shattering
shriek of the steam-pipe...Gordonsville is a straggling village, built along a rocky
turnpike by turns the dustiest and muddiest of highways, a jumble of carsheds,
churches, and country stores. Its trade, apart from the fried chicken, is considerable
in sumac, live-stock, agricultural implements, and Arctic soda-water drawn from
Polar fountains (Hotchkiss, 1972, p. 149).
As late as 1948, and probably later, the C&O had a steam locomotive
coaling facility in Gordonsville. It was a platform type with a 120
ton capacity. There were also two water tanks, one wood and one steel. All of these
facilities (except the steel water tank) were gone by the early 1960’s.
According to the C&O’s 1950 Industrial Directory, Gordonsville
had a team track, a shop track with a 4 car capacity, and a mill track (also with a 4
car capacity). The C&O also had two stock pens in Gordonsville. The team track
served the Piedmont Knitting Company (a textile plant) and the Producers Cooperative
Exchange (which shipped flour, feed, seed, and hay). Holliday Brothers (a coal and
building supply company) had it’s own private siding and the Orange-Madison
Cooperative Bureau was served from a house track.
Photos
The Passenger Station
The first passenger depot in Gordonsville was part of the current
freight station (see below). That station was replaced around 1870
with a two-story depot inside the wye. The new station included a
telegraph office and served both the C&O and the Orange, Alexandria &
Manassas (successor to the O&A). That station was replaced in 1904 by
this unique station, also built inside the wye. The new station
resembles other stations built around the same time (e.g., Doswell, Va;
St. Albans, W.Va). It served the C&O until the advent of Amtrak in
1972. The train sheds were removed in 1974 and the station itself was
demolished in 1977. Photo A shows the station as seen from the rear of
Amtrak train #98 in January of 1973. Photo B shows the station from
Amtrak’s version of the George Washington in February, 1974. (Both
photos by LaVerne Brummel, used with permission)
This view of the station is from a postcard dated September 20, 1910. The
point of view is a common one. (From the collection of Larry Z. Daily)
This is another postcard view of the depot and is roughly contemporaneous with the previous image. That
should be the St. John’s Hotel on the left. (From the collection of Larry Z. Daily)
The Schedule Board
While the station itself is gone, the schedule board still exists and is
housed in the Exchange Hotel. I thought it odd that it’s still showing the schedule
for July 26, 1969. I recently received an email from Lynne Lewis who explains, “Back in December 2000 (as I
recall) I was at the [Exchange Hotel] Museum for a Christmas activity and noticed the blank schedule
board. I asked about it and the guide said that they had always wanted to post the schedule for the last trains
on the last day of passenger service. Well, my father was in the RR business all his life, and so I posed the
question for him. A few weeks later I had the answer and it is on the board as you photographed it, although with
the caveat that there was no guarantee that either direction actually stopped that day - but it was certainly the last
possible train one could have caught out of Gordonsville. Now all we have to do is find someone who remembers whether it
stopped that day or not :-)” (2002 photo)
The Waiter-carriers
Perhaps one of the best-known images of the waiter-carriers is this woodcut
originally published with Hotchkiss’ article in Scribner’s
Monthly in 1872. It is the only image that I am aware of that even gives a
hint of what the 1870 depot might have looked like.
This photo, one of the few taken of the waiter-carriers, is from an old postcard.
There was no date of the photo on the card, but it was postmarked 1907. The photo
must be older than that, though: notice the truss rods on the passenger cars.
I had never seen this image of the waiter-carriers until the postcard it is on
was auctioned on eBay. I had to have it. Like the previous photo, this one is
undated, but the card is postmarked 1911.
Signal Towers
This photo is from a postcard dated October 18, 1916. The wooden signal tower in the foreground was
later replaced by G cabin. The concrete foundation still stands inside the wye. Most of
my sources indicate that G cabin was built in the mid-1930’s or early 1940’s. Recently, however,
I received an email from O. B. Omohundro, Jr, who wrote, “The wooden tower ... was in use up to the late 40s.
When the brick tower (G Cabin) was built, a gentleman by the name of Tom Taylor, who owned the Old Oaken Bucket
hotel on main street, bought the wooden tower and moved the upper part of it to form the office of Taylor’s
Pontiac. This section of the old tower still exists today although if you don’t know the history, you
probably would not recognize it.” He later spoke to Mr. Talor’s son about the tower and then sent me
this: “His son says that it was moved about 1945 and the picture is marked 1950. The address on North Main
is 208, but the roof is about all you will recognize of the original building.“ The top photo is from an
old postcard and shows the tower in use. (circa 1916, from the collection of Larry Z. Daily) The middle
photo shows the top of the tower in its new location. (1950, from Garnett A. Taylor, used with permission)
The bottom photo shows the tower as it appears now. (2003, Larry Z. Daily)
This is G Cabin as it appeared in 1995. It is a fine example of the
C&O’s standard brick cabin. It was built sometime after 1916 - a
photo taken after a big fire in 1916 shows the station, but not G cabin.
I’ve suspected for some time that G cabin was built in the
mid-30’s when the bridge over Main Street was replaced, but I recently
found an article in an old issue of the C&O Historical Society
Newsletter in which the author claimed that it was built in the early
1940’s. (1995 photo)
This concrete foundation is located along the Piedmont Sub side of the wye. It once
supported a wooden signal tower that was used before G cabin was built.
(2001 photo)
The Freight House
The C&O’s freight house in Gordonsville was very near the passenger
depot. The station is one of a few former C&O structures still standing
in Gordonsville. One interesting possibility that has been mentioned recently
is that this building may have the original depot for the town. Historic Gordonsville
members located a deed from 1840 that indicates a building “occupied as a freight
depot” stood on this site. Further, the 1878 Grey map of Gordonsville shows that this
building was once much larger than it is now. The “missing”
section, which was on the side nearest the Exchange Hotel, may have been the
original passenger depot. (1995 photo)
This circa 1990 photo shows the siding that used to serve the freight house and
the mill (see below). By the time I was taking photos with an eye toward modeling
Gordonsville, the siding had been removed. (Photo circa 1990 by Mark Herrmann,
used with permission.)
Historic Gordonsville has successfully acquired the freight house from CSX. One condition
of the sale, however, was that the building be moved 50 feet from active tracks. This
is the station in its new location. The original location was where all the weeds are in
the foreground. (2004 photo)
Bridge #1605
The C&O built this bridge over Rt. 15/33 in the 1930’s. It must
have replaced an earlier structure because one of my references talks about
the railroad overpass on Main Street in 1916. This photo was taken
in 1988. In 1995 the bridge was raised to accommodate truck traffic. Shortly
after that, CSX painted it powder blue. (1988 photo)
Steel Water Tank
This water tank is evident in photos dating back to the 1950’s. There
was also a wooden tank visible in those photos. Both tanks stood inside the
wye. Water columns once stood along each leg of the wye.
(1998 photo)
The Hotels
This is the Exchange Hotel as it appears today. It provided a resting
place for C&O passengers throughout much of its existence and served as a
hospital during the Civil War. Today it is a museum. (1998 photo)
The St. John’s Hotel was owned by James Keegan and was
built in 1870. It was a long, four-story building with a wide, columned
veranda facing the tracks across from the passenger station. The St.
John’s Hotel was quite famous and operated as a hotel well into this
century. This view is from a postcard from the early 1900’s.
(From the collection of Larry Z. Daily)
Magnolia House was built as a hotel in the early 1870’s (it
was definitely in business by 1873). It was bought by James Keegan in 1885
and, at some point after that, was converted to residence. It stands
very close by the tracks, near the location of G cabin (to the left in
the photo). (Top - 1997, Jerry Simonoff photo, used with permission.
Bottom - 1999, Larry Z. Daily)
The Mill
The Gordonsville Milling Company opened in 1910. Its second owner
renamed it Rocklands Milling Co. in 1917. According to Nancy Haney,
the current owner, the mill was also once owned by Southern States.
When her father bought it in 1985 it had reportedly been vacant for 17
years. C&O track charts indicate that the mill and the freight house
once shared a siding. THe siding is visible in this photo (and the freight house photo
above) and its remains still exist in the Depot Street grade crossing. (Photo circa 1990 by Mark Herrmann,
used with permission.)
The Town
These views of Gordonsville’s business district are from old postcards. The top one is post
marked 1908. Note that the bridge is just visible in the background of both; in the top photo it looks much shorter
than the bridge pictured above. The bridge in the lower view looks more like the current version. but it looks like
it’s painted black with white lettering. (From the collection of Larry Z. Daily)
Maps
This map was created using information from U.S.G.S. maps and C&O track
charts dated 1963.
Please note that, due to a huge volume of spam coming in on my email account, I’ve had to change my email address.
The new address is lzdaily@nospam.piedmontsub.com (but remove the nospam and the dot before piedmontsub.com).
All materials on this Web site are protected by United States
copyright law. This includes, but is not limited to, articles and graphics. Unless
otherwise indicated, these materials are the property of Larry Z. Daily and may not
be used without prior written permission of Larry Z. Daily
