Newport News and Mississippi Valley Railroad

Newport News and Mississippi Valley Railroad
Overview
HeadquartersChartered in Connecticut; operating offices in Washington, D.C.
Reporting markNN&MV
LocaleVirginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee
Dates of operation1884–1894

The Newport News and Mississippi Valley Railroad—legally the Newport News & Mississippi Valley Company (NN&MV)—was a Connecticut corporation created by industrialist Collis P. Huntington to consolidate and operate his eastern railroad properties in the 1880s. Chartered by a Connecticut act on March 27, 1884 as the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and renamed Newport News & Mississippi Valley Company on March 10, 1885, it was empowered to own or lease railways outside Connecticut.

In 1886 NN&MV executed very long-term leases of the Elizabethtown, Lexington and Big Sandy Railroad (Kentucky) and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (Virginia), while separately leasing the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad (CO&SW) in the west; contemporary marketing styled the combined lines the “Mississippi Valley Route.”