A Little about the B & O Railroad files and getting the most from them. There are thousands of documents available to those seeking information on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, but not a lot specifically about the Shenandoah Valley Line. This line, from Winchester to Lexington, was conceived prior to the Civil War but construction did not get underway at Harrisonburg until 1873. It would be 1883 before it reached Lexington. The work was slow and the funds were short. If the researcher wishes to follow the trials and tribulations of this venture, consider looking through the hundreds of files in the Newspaper Articles module. They are arranged by date and have a short description of the content in the title. It contains newspaper accounts of the railroad's activities starting in 1856. For a look at the architecture of the railroad, Depots & Stations would be a good choice. For in-depth information, the Form 6 Official Lists contains every detail about every inch of the Baltimore & Ohio nation wide, including the Valley Line. A manual search of these records will produce amazing results. Valuation Maps are the blueprints of the railroad and are detailed down to the inch. Trestles & Bridges are photographs of just that.

While this website might seem like an odd place to house such records, the fact is, not a single commodity travelled out of the Shenandoah Valley by any means other than horse until the railroads came. So the next time you are studying an early 1800s agriculture census for someone in the valley, the abundance of grain crops and the few cattle on each farm will make more sense. Beyond what was needed to survive, farmers and their family members grew, harvested, and made those things that could be transported to market. Transportation of goods could and often did mark the difference between prosperity and barely getting by.