Dublin, Virginia: A Railroad's Irish Name

Dublin, Virginia, came into being in eighteen fifty-four when the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad laid tracks through the New River Valley and established a depot where the rail line crossed the Giles and Pulaski Turnpike. Overnight a small trading center appeared, and by local tradition it took its name from New Dublin Presbyterian Church, which settlers had already named for the Irish capital. The region had drawn Ulster-Scots and German settlers since the seventeen forties, when land speculator James Patton and his partners acquired a hundred thousand acres from the crown.

During the Civil War, Dublin's depot became a Confederate supply link, moving men and materiel through the Valley. After the war the town settled into a quieter life as a Pulaski County market center. Its earliest surviving buildings date to the mid-eighteen hundreds, most of the downtown took shape between the Civil War and the nineteen twenties, and the Dublin Historic District still preserves the look of a New River Valley railroad town built on Scots-Irish pride and the promise of the iron rail.