Кейп-Чарльз қаласының тарихы мен дамуы

the town

Historian William G. Thomas writes, "At a cost of nearly $300,000, the New York, Pennsylvania, and Norfolk Railroad (N. Y. P. & N. R. R.) was dredging a new harbor out of a large fresh water lagoon between King's and Old Plantation creeks in lower Northampton County, and Scott planned to develop a new town around it called Cape Charles City. The appellation "City" for any place on the Eastern Shore was romantic, a vision of the future that the railroad might make possible In 1890, the United States Army Corps of Engineers dredged the harbor basin, its entrance, and a channel through Cherrystone Inlet and built stone jetties protecting the harbor outlet. By 1912 the Engineer Corps estimated that Cape Charles harbor handled 2,500,000 tons of freight a year." Cape Charles was, for many years, the terminal for the Little Creek Cape Charles Ferry, providing passenger and car ferry service across the mouth of the Bay to Norfolk Portsmouth, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake on the SouthSide / Tidewater and across Hampton Roads harbor to Hampton Newport News on the northern Virginia Peninsula. The last ferry left Cape Charles in 1963. Cape Charles served as a terminal for railway freight barges that carried rail cars from the former Eastern Shore Railroad which later became Bay Coast Railroad across the mouth of the Bay to Norfolk. The Bay Coast Railroad ceased operations in 2018. There is also a cement factory nearby. The town hosted the Northampton Red Sox in the old Eastern Shore Baseball League. The Cape Charles Historic District and Stratton Manor are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Under the Köppen climate classification, Cape Charles features a humid subtropical climate with hot, humid summers and chilly, but not very cold winters. Temperatures routinely exceed 90 °F in the summer and typically dip below the freezing point during the winter, though it is somewhat rare for temperatures to dip far below freezing. Cape Charles on average receives roughly 45 inches of precipitation annually. Cape Charles receives 2300 hours of sunshine annually (higher than the USA average).

The town owns one of two public beaches on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, and the only public beach on the bayside of the Eastern Shore. The beach extends one half mile along Bay Avenue with a paved walkway bordering the length of the beachfront. Residents and visitors of the town use the beach for swimming, sunbathing, and similar recreational pursuits. Public access onto the beachfront is provided by two wooden walkovers located near the end of Tazewell and Randolph Avenues, as well as the town's Fun Pier which also has a wooden walkover. The beach is stabilized with buried groins and a bulkhead. In 1987 the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the harbor and channel and deposited the sand along the beach area, which greatly expanded the width of the beach and improved the quality of sand along the beachfront. Beach erosion is an ongoing problem and will require sand replenishment on a periodic basis in order to maintain a sandy beachfront.

The Cape Charles Harbor serves local industry and commerce operations as well as tourists and recreational users. The harbor was originally developed to load and unload railroad cars on barges. The harbor includes extensive bulkheading, as well as commercial docking facilities for industrial uses. The Industrial land use in the Town is concentrated at the Cape Charles Harbor area, and includes the Eastern Shore Railroad, Bayshore Concrete, the commercial dock and the Sustainable Technology Park.