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C&O Milepost 99.2
Station Number: 99
Code Number: 0149
I’m not sure when Peake (or, as it was often called, Peake’s Turnout) was established as a station. The earliest listing that I’ve seen was on a May, 1873 timetable. I also don’t know how much of a town was located there or the origin of the name. I do know that Peake was once the site of The Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls. The school was established in 1915 and functioned as an alternative to jail for African American girls who had gotten into legal trouble. The C&O was apparently quite supportive of the school; several of the annual reports mention the cooperation of “C&O officials” who provided annual passes for the school superintendant and the wards of the school and for arranging special stops of trains for school events.
The 1937 Side Track Record listed a 2080' passing siding (track number 824) and a 580' team track (track number 825) in Peake. The C&O had a station with an agent listed here in 1948. The team track was retired in 1942 along with a portion of the passing siding. I’m not sure when the agency was discontinued, but Peake was retired as a non-agency station December 11, 1961. The station was retired in November, 1962, though 633' of track 824 remained. It was retired in 1978.
Photos |
This is the C&O depot in Peake circa 1920. (Photo from the collection of Thomas W. Dixon, Jr. Used with permission.)
This image is from an unused postcard claiming to show the C&O depot in Peake. The building doesn’t look like the one in the photo above, but I have no information on older (or newer) depot buildings. Can anyone shed any light on this? (From a postcard in the collection of Larry Z. Daily)
[NEW] While updating the site in the summer of 2025, I stumbled across this photo that I took on August 26, 1999. If the building in the previous image was the Peake depot, it was still standing in 1999. (Photo by Larry Z. Daily)
The caption on the back of this postcard says, “Building first occupied by the colored girls of the Industrial Home School at Peake, Virginia.” (From a postcard in the collection of Larry Z. Daily)
Maps |
These maps were prepared from U.S.G.S. topological maps, C&O track charts dated 1963, C&O Side Track Records dated 1937, a copy of the Side Track Records updated through the 1990’s, and C&O Valuation maps, also updated through the 1990’s.
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