Salisbury Union Station: The Railroad That Made a City

The brick Flemish-bond station at the edge of downtown Salisbury was built in nineteen thirteen and fourteen at the junction of two rail lines: the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad and the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic. Both eventually became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran the Del-Mar-Va Express through here several times daily, connecting Philadelphia to Cape Charles, Virginia. The station sent a signal: Salisbury had become a commercial hub of the Delmarva Peninsula. Passenger service ended in nineteen fifty-eight when cars and highways made the trains redundant, but the building survived as a reminder of the moment a regional railroad junction turned a market town into a city.