This Civil-War era Train Station was attacked by Union Forces several times

Beaverdam Depot, Beaverdam Virginia

Date added: June 18, 2024

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View of facade taken looking southwest corner; (1988)

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The antebellum period in Virginia was one of rapid progress in the growth of internal improvements, including canals, turnpikes, and railroads. In 1816 the Board of Public Works was established to manage the state's Fund for Internal Improvement; the board used the fund to purchase shares of stock, in the many internal improvement companies that spread across the state.

At first, the emphasis was on the construction of canals and turnpikes, but gradually the railroads came to dominate the state's incomplete canal system, providing relatively cheap and quick transportation for goods and people. Communities grew up and developed close by railroad repair shops, turnarounds, and depots.

One such community was Beaverdam Station, in Hanover County, which grew up around Beaverdam Depot on the Louisa Railroad line. The Louisa Railroad began in 1836 as a branch line of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad, which ran north from Richmond to Aquia on the Potomac River. The Louisa Railroad ran thirty-six miles from Hanover Junction to Louisa Court House after it was completed. The RF&P furnished the motive power and cars, set the schedules, and carried the produce of Louisa County farmers, who were many miles from navigable water, over its own tracks from Hanover Junction into Richmond.

During the 1840s many investors grew dissatisfied with things as they were, particularly when counties to the west of Louisa clamored for railroads. The line was extended, finally, across the Blue Ridge to the vicinity of Covington, in Alleghany County, and provided the state with a centrally located railroad that ran from east to west. On 2^nd February 1850 the name of the Louisa Railroad was changed to the Virginia Central Railroad.

At Beaverdam Station, along the original route of the Louisa Railroad, a depot had been built by 1840. To judge by the subsequent history of the community around it, the depot probably was a frame structure. Nearby dwelt Edmund Fontaine, president of the Louisa and Virginia Central railroad companies until after the Civil War. Except for occasional meetings of stockholders at the company office, and the comings and goings of the trains, life at Beaverdam Station was uneventful until the Civil War overwhelmed it in 1862.

In peacetime the railroads had served the farmers; in wartime they became crucial to the rapid movement of troops and supplies. Much effort was expended by each side in attempts to protect, capture, or destroy the railroads and their equipment. The depots became storage centers for military supplies; as such they were considered especially valuable.

The first Union raid on Beaverdam Station took place early in the morning of 20^th July 1862. A young Confederate captain, John Singleton Mosby, had just arrived at the depot to await a train that would take him to General Thomas J. ("Stonewall") Jackson. He had laid his pistols and haversack on the floor of the depot and had just sat down outside "when somebody exclaimed 'Here they are!' A regiment of Northern cavalry was not a hundred yards away, coming up at a trot. I ran, but they caught me and got my pistols and haversack." Mosby soon was exchanged, but the depot at Beaverdam Station was destroyed. In a report to Major General John Pope, Brigadier General Rufus King announced that the raid by his Union cavalry had been a success: "they broke up the Central Railroad for several miles, burnt the depot at Beaver Dam, cut the telegraph communication, and created a general alarm in that part of the State. In the depot destroyed were 100 barrels of flour and 40,000 cartridges, besides other goods."

The annual report of the Virginia Central Railroad for 1862 reported the company's losses but ended on an optimistic note: "All the buildings at Beaver Dam and the bridge across the Cowpasture River were … destroyed by the enemy with fire. Depot at Beaver Dam has been rebuilt and almost completed."

The next destructive visit by Union cavalry took place in the afternoon and evening of 29^th December 1864 in conjunction with Colonel Ulric Dahlgren's ill-fated raid on Richmond to capture President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. A large detachment was sent to Beaverdam Station, where "the railroad depot, water-tanks, store-house, ect., were destroyed, the switches, turn-outs, and track pulled up and burned, the telegraph cut, and the poles taken down for a considerable distance. An attempt was made to capture a railroad train that was heard approaching from Richmond, but taking alarm from the burning buildings at the station, it succeeded in backing out of the way before my men could reach it." A Union captain described the scene as the fires spread: "By the time we reached Beaver Dam Station it grew dark and rain began to fall. The light, however, that was there might have been seen for many miles. Twenty wooden buildings were at once set on fire, forming one sheet of flame, rising high above the surrounding woods, and the black forms of our soldiers jumping around it seemed from a distance like demons on some hellish sport."

The train approaching from Richmond was warned that the station was in Union hands not by the fire, but by a local physician who heard the train and flagged it down. Not believing his story, the engineer and conductor walked up the tracks to see for themselves and almost walked into the Union cavalry. They ran back to the train, threw the engine into reverse, and backed up at full speed to Hanover Junction several miles away, at one point outracing the attacking cavalry.

The last destructive raid on Beaverdam Station occurred on 9^th May 1864 when cavalry under the command of Brigadier General George A. Custer captured what must have been a desolate, half-deserted village. Again the depot, which probably was some makeshift structure, was destroyed, along with several million dollars worth of Confederate arms, supplies, and hospital tents.

At last the war ended and the railroads began the tedious process of rebuilding what had been destroyed. On 12^th November 1866 the president of the Virginia Central Railroad was able to report to the stockholders that significant progress had been made: "Several of your depots, are rebuilt, and the others will be in the course of this fiscal year." In the body of the report Beaverdam was specifically mentioned, under the heading of Station Buildings and Fixtures: "The freight houses at Beaver Dam, Tolersville, Ivy, Meachum's river and Greenwood have been repaired or rebuilt, and the freight house in Staunton will be completed in December." The depot now standing at Beaverdam, then, was built during the first years of Reconstruction.

After the war Virginia, like many states, entered a period of rapid railroad expansion. New lines were built, companies thrived and then went bankrupt, and other companies absorbed their competitors. The Virginia Central Railroad eventually was purchased by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, which itself went through a period of turmoil and receivership before it emerged in the 1880s as one of the dominant lines in Virginia.

The Reconstruction era also witnessed attempts by white Southerners to segregate the races on public carriers. For most of the last few decades of the 19^th century, however, blacks successfully defeated such efforts by a combination of lawsuits, boycotts, and civil disobedience.

Racial segregation in public transportation became a reality in the South in 1896, when the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The case involved a black in Louisiana who had been arrested for refusing to move to a separate railroad car for blacks when ordered to do so. The Plessy decision upheld the principle of racial segregation in public transportation as well as the principle of "separate but equal", a principle never observed in reality.

Although the racial segregation ("Jim Crow") laws passed by the Southern states were held by the Supreme Court to apply only to intrastate travel, many railroads applied them to their interstate trains as well.

In Chiles v. Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, decided in 1910, the Supreme Court declared such company segregation rules reasonable and valid. Since a Jim Crow policy accorded with the established customs and 'general sentiment' of the South and was not forbidden by any federal law, Southern railways were free to separate their interstate patrons by race.

With the Plessy decision in mind, the General Assembly of Virginia passed an act on 30^th January 1900 requiring railroad companies "to provide separate cars for white and colored passengers", and to divide the cars by partitions and doors, if necessary, to ensure the separation of the races. Four years later a new state constitution was proclaimed that effectively disfranchised Virginia's blacks. In 1910, the same year that the Chiles decision was handed down, the General Assembly passed an act "to promote order and the comfort of passengers on the conveyances and at the stopping places of carriers of passengers." Although the act did not specifically mention railroad depots, its title and intention were clear: to provide a system, complete with penalties, for the segregation of passengers by race on all forms of public transportation and in waiting rooms. By 1910, then, the process that had begun with Plessy and had been codified in the 1904 constitution, the relegation of blacks to second-class status, had been completed.

Sometime between 1900 and 1910, then, the waiting room at Beaverdam Depot, like so many others across the South, was divided into white and black sections. Although the depot is no longer in use, it survives as a tangible reminder of what historian C. Vann Woodward has called the South's "capitulation to racism" in the early years of the 20^th century.

Although the Plessy and Chiles decisions were challenged again and again in subsequent decades, it was not until 1961 that the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations ordering the desegregation of all forms of public transportation and related facilities.

Building Description

A rare example of a Civil War-era railroad structure, the Beaverdam Depot is a one-story brick building with decorative corbelling and pilasters. The interior is divided into two waiting rooms (one for whites and one for blacks), an office, a baggage room, and a freight room, all of which retain their original features. The depot, which occupies a prominent location in this small Hanover County community, is a pivotal structure in Beaverdam.

Constructed circa 1865, Beaverdam Depot occupies a narrow, slightly sloped, restricted site, with the railroad tracks running along the southwest and a siding track and street to the northeast. This site is in close proximity to the intersection of VA Routes 739 and 715, which constitutes the center of Beaverdam.

Though simple and functional in design, the building is enhanced with decorative brickwork. The one-story structure is long and narrow, with an asphalt shingle-covered gable roof that is supported by wood trusses. The brick, which is laid in American bond, has three corbelled courses at the cornice and more elaborate corbelling in a pendant pattern at the gable ends. The two side elevations have recessed panels between pilasters and there are corner pilasters at each of the four corners. The lot drops several feet to the southeast, thus resulting ina raised foundation at this end of the building. Random vent openings are found in the foundation on the northeast and southeast elevations. Two brick flue stacks with decorative banding project from the southeast end of the building and denote the locations of the office and waiting room stoves.

The northwest facade, which faces the community of Beaverdam, has a hipped-roof porch roof supported by chamfered posts with chamfered brackets. The roof has exposed rafters with decorative sawn ends. The fenestration is slightly asymmetrical, with the entrance to the former white waiting room being slightly off-center to the left. This entrance has an arched door opening delineated by a projecting course of headers. The wood door has four raised panels. The windows to either side of the entrance are four-over-four double-hung.

The southeast end elevation has a small round window in the gable end below which is a wood sign painted with "Beaverdam." A centered wood door is several feet above grade. This door was likely accessed by wood steps. A transom above the door has been infilled with brick but the arch of projecting headers is still visible.

The northeast elevation is located within a couple of feet of the siding track, which is separated from the road by several feet. The long wall of this elevation is divided into nine panels, each separated by brick pilasters. At the northwest end are two _ four-over-four double-hung windows for the former white waiting room. Each of these, like the three doors to their left, have arched openings. In the panel to the left of the windows is a wood door leading to the office. A wood sliding door in the next panel to the left leads to the baggage area. Three brick panels separate this from an identical door for the freight area. A small square window with bars is centered in the next panel to the left and a double-hung window is located in the southeast end panel. Each of these windows is covered with a single wood shutter.

The track-side elevation is very similar to the northeast. On axis with the door to the office is a three-sided projecting bay with three narrow four-over-four double-hung windows with panels of beaded board below. To the left of the projection is the entrance to the black waiting room. A poured-in-place concrete loading ramp in front of the freight door has been added.

The interior is remarkably intact. Both waiting rooms are plain rooms with beaded-board walls and ceilings, wood floors and architrave door and window surrounds with bulls-eye corner blocks. A ticket window with a two-paneled door is similarly finished. A narrow shelf below the ticket window is supported by a pair of brackets. A door next to the ticket window leads to the office, which is identically finished. This room still retains shelving, a safe, and switching mechanisms. A door in the interior wall leads to the baggage room, the wood floor of which is slightly above that of the office. Visible in this area are the large wooden trusses that support the roof. A locked cage for valuables and a scale remain. A partition wall separates the baggage and freight rooms. The rear freight room has a concrete floor.