Source: Virginia Port Authority
In addition to the Norfolk Naval Station, the world's largest naval base, three of the four Port of Virginia terminals are in Hanmpton Roads. The fourth terminal, the Inland Port at Front Royal, is connected to Hampton Roads by the Norfolk Southern railroad. That allows trucks from the Midwest and Northeast to deliver or pick up containers at the port - 220 miles closer to the markets, and without the delays associated with driving to Hampton Roads. There are additional ports in Virginia at Richmond and Alexandria, but they are minor operations comnpared to the international trade that flows through Hampton Roads.
The state-owned Port of Virginia has three ports in southeastern Virginia, plus an "inland port" at Front Royal in Warren County (see locations). The Norfolk International Terminal is the largest in the state, the Portsmouth Marine Terminal is the second-largest. The Newport News Marine Terminal used to attract cruise ships to a passenger terminal at Pier B, but now they resupply and load at Norfolk next to the Nauticus Museum. It's an odd contrast to see the Canival Cruise behemoths now from the "dinghy dock" at the start of the Inland Waterway:
The statistics for the three terminals of the Port of Virginia in southeastern Virginia indicate, for 2002-2003:
Though Virginia is no longer a colony in a mercantile economy, it is still exporting commodities and unmanufactured goods. Coal replaced tobacco as the #1 export (by weight), after railroads connected the Appalachian coal fields to the Hampton Roads ports.
The railroad know today as the Norfolk Southern (including the old Norfolk and Western railroad and the Virginian railroad) linked the Virginia coal in Tazewell, Buchanan, Wise, and Dickenson counties plus the West Virginia coal fields to the port facilities at Norfolk. The railroad now known as CSX (including the former Chesapeake and Ohio, or C&O, railroad) linked west Virginia coal to export markets through its port at Newport News.
If you take I-664 over the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel, you'll pass the CSX loading facilities on the southern edge of the Peninsula (which is the northern end of the bridge, on the James River shoreline). The Norfolk Southern facilities at Lamberts Point in Norfolk are not so obvious to the casual traveler - but if you search for "Lamberts Point Terminal" on the USGS Geographic Names Information System... you can see where it is in relation to the other features on the Elizabeth River.
Those three terminals handled 11,351,673 tons of container cargo in 2000. The number of cargo containers imported through those three ports vary with economic conditions:
| Year | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Containers | 488,386 | 453,936 | 522,137 | 615,602 | 659,216 | 716,850 | 729,070 | 760,397 | 793,809 | 760,684 | 832,415 | 947,872 | 1,046,730 |
The military and commercial facilities at Hampton Roads could make it the most at-risk military target in Virginia. One argument in the debate about building a missile shield for national defense is that the "bad guys" could deliver a nuclear weapon in a shipping container, and eliminate America's largest naval base without a missile.
After September 11, 2001, the Coast Guard started intercepting commercial ships offshore and requiring 96 hours advance notice before allowing vessels into Hampton Roads. However, it's unrealistic to inspect the each of the individual containers, with an average of over 14 tons of cargo in each. Currently, about 2% of the containers are physically inspected...
