First Railroad (E-32)
E-32

The first railroad in the State was completed in 1833 from Petersburg, Va., to Blakely, on the Roanoke River, a short distance southeast.

Location: US 158/301 at Roanoke River bridge southwest of Garysburg
County: Northampton
Original Date Cast: 1942

Railroad building in North Carolina commenced with the opening of track from Petersburg, Virginia, to Blakely on the Roanoke River in 1833. The Petersburg Railroad Company in June and September 1832 registered in the Northampton County Court petitions and plats making clear their intentions to construct such a rail line. Among the documents was an order to “lay off the road through the lands according to the survey made by their engineer.”

The railroad company secured rights to pass across tracts from Goodwin Daniel, John Richards, James Smith, Samuel Daniel, Nancy Richards, and George Jordan, among others. Notice appearing in a newspaper in September 1833 indicated that “all gentlemen who are disposed to take the Rail Road at Blakely may depend upon having their horses well taken care of.”

Further development of rail lines received a boost from the state constitutional convention of 1835. The session resulted in a greater representation of population in the western portion of the state and the consequent demand for east-west transportation. The Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, completed in 1840 and with a terminus nearby, was in its day the longest rail line in the world.


References:
Cecil Kenneth Brown, A State Movement in Railroad Development (1928)
John Gilbert and Grady Jeffreys, Crossties through Carolina: The Story of North Carolina’s Early Day Railroads (1969)
Raleigh Register, August 6, 1933
(Raleigh) Star and North Carolina Gazette, September 20, 1833
Northampton County Court Records, North Carolina State Archives
William S. Powell, ed., Encyclopedia of North Carolina (2006)

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