Wakefield, VA (Town)

Wakefield is a Sussex County town whose local identity comes with a peanut tin, a weather map, and a plate of shad. The Virginia Diner gives it the Peanut Capital of the World nickname, the National Weather Service office sends forecasts across a wide slice of the Mid-Atlantic, and the annual Shad Planking keeps an old Virginia food-and-politics tradition on the calendar. Wakefield incorporated in 1902 and grew along the railroad and U.S. 460. It is southern Virginia in a peanut-and-railroad shape.