Completed on 16 October 1881, the new double-tracked railroad and the other development visions of industrialist Collis Potter Huntington resulted in a 15-year transition of the rural farm village of Newport News into a new independent city which also became home to the world's largest shipyard.

The railroad, one of the later developed in Virginia, became important to many communities, opening transportation options, and stimulating commerce and military operations on the Peninsula throughout the 20th century.

Despite the changes, in the early 21st century, the rails of the Peninsula Subdivision continue to form an important link for Amtrak service from Williamsburg and Newport News.

High quality bituminous coal was the motivation for originally building the line, and current owner CSX Transportation continues day and night to deliver massive amounts of it to be loaded onto ships destined for points worldwide.

Many years before the American Revolution, George Washington, a Virginian licensed as a surveyor by the College of William and Mary during the colonial era, identified the importance of a transportation link between the navigable waters flowing to the Atlantic Ocean and those across the Eastern Continental Divide in the Allegheny Mountains which lead to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.

The James River was navigable east from the Fall Line at Richmond and Manchester to Hampton Roads, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean.

In the earlier periods during which a transportation link was contemplated, the Colony of Virginia (according to the British and its own calculations) extended all the way to the west to what is now Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers join.

Both railroads and canals had conquered the Blue Ridge Mountains and entered the Shenandoah Valley region when the American Civil War broke out in 1861, bringing new work to a virtual halt.

By the end of the War in 1865, many of Virginia's railroads, turnpikes, and canals lay in ruins, although the related debt which had helped fund building them was still outstanding.

He was a descendant of several former Virginia governors and the grandson of constitutional lawyer John Wickham, who had set up shop in Richmond after the American Revolutionary War and served as a respected agent of financial interests in England and Scotland.

However, one problem they faced was that depth of the channels of the tidal portion of the river to reach Richmond was insufficient to accommodate the draft required by the large colliers.

As a young man in 1837, Collis P. Huntington had visited the rural village known as Newport News Point in Warwick County at the mouth of the James River on the harbor of Hampton Roads.

From there east, the only significant obstacles across the gentle coastal plains a distance of about 75 miles (121 km) were several rivers and some wetlands down the Peninsula to reach Newport News.

Unlike the bedrock through which the C&O carved its western tunnels, in Richmond, the blue marl clay shrink-swell soil tended to change with rainfall and groundwater.

East of the tunnel, the C&O established its Fulton Yard, with a capacity of thousands of rail cars, a roundhouse to service the steam locomotives, and other support facilities.

The Peninsula Extension ran directly through Williamsburg, a city whose site had been selected in 1632 for the very reason that it was on the center ridge, or spine, of the land between the adjacent rivers.

Although the main business purpose was unquestionably shipping eastbound coal to Newport News, the C&O dutifully established freight and passenger stations at frequent intervals along the way.

No sooner had the tracks to the coal pier at Newport News been completed in late 1881 than the same construction crews were put to work on what would later be called the Peninsula Subdivision's Hampton Branch.

From a junction with the main line a few miles west of the coal pier which was named Old Point Junction, work began easterly a distance of about 10 miles (16 km) into Elizabeth City County toward Hampton and Old Point Comfort, where the United States Army base at Fort Monroe was a fortress situated to guard the entrance to the harbor of Hampton Roads from the Chesapeake Bay (and the Atlantic Ocean).

During the first half of the 20th century, excursion trains were operated to reach nearby Buckroe Beach, where an amusement park was among the attractions that brought church groups and vacationers.

However, in 1958, voters of both communities chose to reunite, consolidating Newport News with the rest of the former county into an even bigger single independent city, one of the largest in Virginia in land area.)

To create a good connection to the existing line at Fulton yard, and as an added benefit, avoid the troublesome Church Hill tunnel, the C&O constructed a 3-mile-long double track elevated viaduct along the riverfront extending between the area of Hollywood Cemetery east past downtown Richmond, the Shockoe Valley, and Church Hill to join the Peninsula Subdivision at Fulton Yard (east of the tunnel).

DuPont Nemours company announced that it would develop a large black powder and shell-loading plant facility six miles northeast of Williamsburg[16] in York County.

At its peak, Penniman had housing for 15,000, and included dormitories, a store, a post office, bank, police station, church, YWCA, YMCA, Mess Halls canteen, and a hospital.

During World War II, beginning in 1942, the U.S. Navy took over a large area on the north side of the Virginia Peninsula in York County which became known as Camp Peary, initially for use as a Seabee training base.

It has served to provide railroad operation and maintenance training to the US Army and to carry out selected materiel movement missions both within the post and in interchange with the Peninsula Subsdivision via a junction at Lee Hall.

A community project, the local Virginia Gazette newspaper reported that in January 2009, following historical research, the Norge Station had been repainted in its original livery, featuring a bright orange as the primary color.

In Williamsburg, a number of years before the Restoration, the C&O tracks initially ran down Duke of Gloucester Street and through the grounds of the former Capitol at the eastern end.

[20] In 1907, the C&O replaced its passenger station with a fine brick colonial style structure to accommodate the patrons of the tercentennial (300th anniversary) of the founding of Jamestown in 1607.

Partially on the key property donated to the APVA by Dominion Land Company, a major centerpiece, the brick Capitol was recreated, as well as dozens of other buildings.