Warwick County remained a primarily farming area until the arrival of the Peninsula Extension of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in late 1881.
At rural Newport News Point, on the harbor of Hampton Roads, a small community of farms was transformed into a major port for shipping coal.
An important feature of independent city status was that it guaranteed protection against annexation of territory by adjacent communities.
At a ribbon cutting ceremony, the widow of Philip W. Hiden, the first mayor of Newport News to serve under a new City Council-City Manager form of government from 1920 to 1924 whose family developed the Hidenwood community [1] joined the widow of Homer L. Ferguson, who had been a President of Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company and is credited with initiating development of Hilton Village, as the Guests of Honor.
These elderly ladies helped formalize the reunification of the area which had previously been one single unit of local government from 1634 to 1896.