Mark’s Score 7.8
Parksley is one of those towns you pass through on the way to somewhere else. In fact, you don’t even pass through it, as it is several miles west of Rte. 13. Being off the beaten path, it is a place easily missed and easily forgotten. I first came across Parksley several years ago, when I decided to do a little exploring. I knew nothing about the town, and I assumed it would look like many of the other down on their luck rural towns of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. But I was wrong.
Unlike older colonial communities on the shore, Parksley owes its existence to the railroads. When the railroad arrived on the lower Delmarva in 1885, Parksley was founded as a service community for the railroad. The town grew up around a railroad stop, and was incorporated in 1904, much later than most other communities on the peninsula. It became an important hub for seafood and agricultural products and grew rapidly around the turn of the century. Consequently, Parksley today is noted for its Victorian charm and its Eastern Shore Railway Museum.
On my last visit I was passing through Parksley on my way home from Onancock. Instead of taking Rte. 13, I like to drive home via Greenbush Rd. This road takes you through Virginia’s flat as an ironing board farmland. Though I love driving through farmland, this part of Virginia is rather featureless and uninteresting. Coming from Onancock, you enter Parksley through its industrial south end, which is not a promising start Then you come to the main square at Greenbush and Bennet. This is the center of town and here you will find the Railroad Museum, a local farmers market, and Parksley’s modest and slightly weather beaten downtown. This is a working downtown, not a tourist village. But if you look beyond the pealing, paint and the slightly scruffy facades, you can see the charm and faded glory of the town’s Victorian heyday. This is a dowager countess of a town, past its peak, a bit rickety, but still proud of its place and history; which is embodied in the railroad museum.
The eastern Shore Railway Museum is at the north end of the town square. It is a small exhibit, too small to write a separate review. It includes the charming Victorian train station, and a few passenger cars from the mid-twentieth century. In my view, it is worth a visit but you don’t need to spend a lot of time there.
The real charm and treasure of Parksley lies to the west of Greenbush Road. This is the old residential area of Parksley built to house railroad and service industry employees. If you walk or drive on the avenues running parallel to Greenbush (Staunton, Jones, and Wilson) you will find a treasure trove of fine examples of stately Victorian architecture. Walking in this neighborhood is like returning to an America that has long since passed, and has been preserved in this little bit of Virginia that time has forgotten. If you are traveling down Rte. 13, take the small detour and visit this historic little town, you won’t regret it.
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