The Keysville Railroad Station, in the Charlotte County town of Keysville, was a rare surviving example of a late-19th-century frame train station, and one that also preserved the segregated waiting rooms common to Jim Crow era public buildings. It was built in phases between 1890 and 1900 on the Richmond & Danville Railroad, occupying the site of an antebellum depot that was destroyed during the Civil War. With the construction of a spur line to Durham, North Carolina in 1882, the Keysville Railroad Station was ideally located at a “Y” juncture of the two lines, providing a place for trains to switch directions. As the station served both passenger and freight service, it had a significant impact on the town of Keysville at the beginning of the 20th century. With long rectilinear forms and wide eaves to shelter passengers, one-story frame depots were once common across southern Virginia; today few remain, which made the Keysville Depot an important reminder of the town’s development and a significant architectural vestige of Virginia’s railroad history. Sadly, by the early 2020’s the Keysville Railroad Station was no longer extant.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia