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Norfolk, the Gate of the West, 1858
(For more Norfolk geography tidbits, click here.)
S. Herries DeBow, in “Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay” (Debow’s Review, May 1858, v.24, no.5), argued eloquently that Norfolk and the Chesapeake Bay should, through railroads, become the “gate of the West”:
"In the centre of the Atlantic coast, opposite the straits of Gibraltar, lies the mouth of the  Chesapeake, under the temperate and delightful clime of the thirty-seventh meridian. This is ‘the gate of the West’ and here, like the young giants of the new world, stands Cape Henry and Cape Charles, with the frowning castle of the Rip-Raps, and impregnable Monroe, to guard the uncounted treasures that lie within their keeping. The pillars of the Hercules may still be the boundary of the Old World, the ultima thule of kings – the limits of despotism, oppression, and priest-craft; hbut the world of liberty lies in the West, and ‘westward the star of empire takes its way;’ for here the people can ‘rest under their own vine and fig-tree, with none to molest them or make them afraid.’..."
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