Franklin City is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

Accomack County, Virginia Accomack County is a United States county located in the eastern edge of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Together, Accomack and Northampton counties make up the Eastern Shore of Virginia, which in turn is part of the Delmarva Peninsula, bordered ...

, United States. Greenbackville and neighboring Franklin City grew as a result of the railroad line laid in the late 19th century to transport

oysters Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but not al ...

and other

shellfish Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater envir ...

from Chincoteague to

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. By the 1870s, the Frankfort and Worcester Railroad reached

Snow Hill, Maryland Snow Hill is a town and the county seat of Worcester County, Maryland, United States. The population was 2,103 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Salisbury, Maryland-Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area. History Snow Hill was founded in 1 ...

. In 1876, Maryland judge John R. Franklin, a stockholder in the railroad, was able to get the line extended to land he owned just south of the state line in Virginia. Later, the

New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad The New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad was a railroad line that ran down the spine of the Delmarva Peninsula from Wilmington, Delaware to Cape Charles, Virginia and then by ferry to Norfolk, Virginia. It became part of the Pennsylvania Ra ...

built track the length of the

Delmarva Peninsula The Delmarva Peninsula, or simply Delmarva, is a large peninsula and proposed state on the East Coast of the United States, occupied by the vast majority of the state of Delaware and parts of the Eastern Shore regions of Maryland and Virginia ...

, reaching Cape Charles in 1884 and joining the Frankfort & Worcester.Carol Vaughn
Federal Government Wants Early Railroad Building Removed
, ''Eastern Shore Post'', Feb. 27, 2020. Judge Franklin planned and surveyed Franklin City, which was to have three main streets, crossed by five others, and envisioned a town of around 2,000, centered around the railroad. By 1877, a post office and a hotel were established, joining a general store, and several oyster-packing houses. Commercial fishermen harvested over a hundred thousand bushels of oysters a year from

Chincoteague Bay Chincoteague Bay () is a lagoon between the Atlantic barrier islands of Assateague and Chincoteague and the mainland of Worcester County, Maryland and northern Accomack County, Virginia. At the bay's northern end, where it narrows between Assatea ...

, bringing much of that harvest to the Franklin City depot, from which it was shipped north by train. Ferries carried freight and passengers between Franklin City and Chincoteague. An 1896 fire destroyed many Franklin City buildings; not all were rebuilt. A series of storms in the 20th century, combined with the opening in 1922 of a bridge and causeway to Chincoteague, threw Franklin City into decline. The railroad was abandoned in 1955. After the construction of the Chincoteague Causeway,

the Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion ...

and the nor'easter of 1962 continued to erode Franklin City's and Greenbackville's economic base. Little remains of Franklin City.Reprint of article from Norfolk ''Virginian-Pilot'' of January 6, 2008.
Retrieved April 8, 2008.

References

Unincorporated communities in Virginia Unincorporated communities in Accomack County, Virginia {{AccomackCountyVA-geo-stub