Cheriton, VA

Cheriton is a Northampton County town on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, with 486 residents in the 2020 census. Its history reaches back to the earliest English settlement: Captain John Smith recorded landing here in 1608, and a 1630s settlement stood near present Cherrystone. Modern Cheriton took shape after the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad reached the area in 1884. Dr. William Stratton Stoakley laid out town lots in 1886; Cheriton and Sunnyside later grew together, and the town incorporated in 1951.

U.S. Route 13 now bypasses the old center, leaving Business Route 13 as Main Street. Near town, Eyre Hall preserves a 1760 house, an earlier wing, outbuildings, formal garden, and family cemetery; its plantation history includes the lives and labor of enslaved people and the descendants who maintained the property. The estate became a National Historic Landmark in 2012. Cheriton is an Eastern Shore service town where the railroad, bay road, colonial landscape, and modern fire and rescue services share one narrow map.