Tobacco Road

Tobacco Road. Urbanna, Virginia. Right in front of you is one of the oldest roads in America, Prettyman's Rolling Road descends to the waterfront at the end of Virginia Street. The early economy of Virginia was built from the growing and selling of tobacco. Urbanna Creek provided 14-feet of deep water where large ships from New England, the British West Indies and Great Britain could sail inside the creek. Lighters, barges and other craft were used to carry wooden hogshead full of tobacco leaves, each weighing 1000 pounds, out to awaiting ships. A tobacco warehouse was officially established in town by the Virginia Assembly Warehouse Act of 1713. Warehouses were located near the end of this street. The custom house, still standing directly across from here, was where the business of selling and grading of the tobacco took place. The Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730 gave warehouses the power to destroy substandard crops and to issue bills of exchange for good crops that served as currency. The law centralized the inspection of tobacco at 40 warehouses in the colony. By 1769, Urbanna, Cabin Point, Yorktown, Port Royal, Aquia, Dumfries and Occoquan were Virginia's officially small tobacco ports, and the town flourished in the half-century before the American Revolution. Tobacco was the number one export, however small grain such as wheat and corn, peas, beans, flour, hemp, lumber and flax seed were also shipped from the colonial town's seaport. The ships brought with them all types of goods from Great Britain and around the world, which fueled Urbanna's commerce. Scottish factors (merchants) from Edinburgh and other Scottish towns, realizing the commercial potential of these small ports, established retail stores. The building here on this site is the last Colonial Scottish Factor store left in America.