Virginia Seashore A Year Round Playground-Among Historic Shrines

“Come to the Virginia Seashore! Sunshine – Bathing – Boating – Fishing – Golf – Sightseeing – Longest Highway Bridge in the East.”

This inviting view of the Chesapeake Bay and region around Norfolk, Virginia, was published around 1930 by the James River Bridge Corporation. It was issued to encourage local tourists to hit the roads (not the railroads!) and travel the region via the new James River Bridge, completed just a few years prior. A charming blend of aerial perspective and pictorial map highlights local urban centers, landmarks, recreational areas, and the natural landscape. According to text in the lower left, “this route, in connection with the five-minute Portsmouth-Norfolk ferry, affords a material savings in time to motorists visiting the Beaches.” The sheet, from top to bottom, presents a tempting mix of history and modern recreation.

The verso includes several road maps by the American Automobile Association of Washington, D.C.; city plans of Richmond and D.C., Motor Routes to the Virginia Seashore, and a strip map of the Chesapeake Bay. Photographs of local attractions and a ‘Partial List of Tourist Accommodations’ are also provided, offering the intrepid tourist all that is needed to plan a trip to the shore.

Despite the best promotional efforts of the James River Bridge Corporation, the company struggled financially. The privately owned James River Bridge, the largest in the world (over water) at the time it opened, was expensive to operate and maintain. The lag in tourism during the Great Depression and competition from other local bridges meant that traffic (i.e., paying customers) never met expectations and the corporation filed for bankruptcy in 1933.