Orleans Cross Roads is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

that lies on the western flanks of

Sideling Hill Sideling Hill, also Side Long Hill, is a long, steep, narrow mountain ridge in the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians, Ridge-and-Valley (or Allegheny Mountains) physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains, located in Washington County, Maryla ...

on the

Potomac River The Potomac River () is in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and flows from the Potomac Highlands in West Virginia to Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. It is long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography D ...

in Morgan County,

West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...

. To its south,

Rockwell Run Rockwell Run is a mountain stream in Morgan County, West Virginia. It is a tributary of the Potomac River. The Rockwell Formation is named after Rockwell Run, where exposures of the formation were first described by Stose and Swartz in 1912.Stos ...

, a mountain

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...

fed by springs, empties into the Potomac. Orleans Cross Roads lies along the old

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the oldest railroads in North America, oldest railroad in the United States and the first steam engine, steam-operated common carrier. Construction of the line began in 1828, and it operated as B&O from 1830 ...

directly across the river from Little Orleans. It is accessible by way of Orleans Road (CR 18/1) from Cacapon Road (

West Virginia Route 9 West Virginia Route 9 (WV 9) is a major east–west state highway located in the eastern extents of West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle. The western terminus of the route is at the Maryland state line on the north edge of Paw Paw, where WV ...

) via Detour Road (CR 18). Once the site of a functioning station on the B&O, Orleans Cross Roads also had its own operating post office. The community and post office were often known as Orleans Cross Roads or Orleans Crossroads while its station was known as Orleans Road Station. It is still inhabited today and is the site of the historic Orleans Cross Roads Methodist Episcopal Church, built in the 1850s.

References

Unincorporated communities in Morgan County, West Virginia Unincorporated communities in West Virginia Baltimore and Ohio Railroad West Virginia populated places on the Potomac River {{MorganCountyWV-geo-stub