Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Cape Charles, VA

Cape Charles is a town in Northampton County, Virginia, on the Eastern Shore near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

As of the 2020 census, Cape Charles had a population of 1,178.

Cape Charles was founded in 1884 at a place formerly known as Cherrystone Harbor as a planned community by railroad and ferry interests, and it was established as the 'Municipal Corporation of Cape Charles' that year; the town was formally incorporated on March 1, 1886.

In 1883, William Lawrence Scott, president of the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad, bought three plantations totaling about 2,509 acres from the heirs of former Virginia Governor Littleton Waller Tazewell; 40 acres went to the railroad and 136 acres were laid out as the town, surveyed and platted into 644 equal lots.

The railroad built a harbor at Cape Charles to handle steamships and freighters crossing to Norfolk, and the rail line through town to the shoreline was completed on October 25, 1884.

For many years Cape Charles was the terminal of the Little Creek-Cape Charles Ferry, which carried passengers and cars across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay; the last ferry left Cape Charles in 1963, just before the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel opened in 1964.

Cape Charles also served as the terminal for railway freight barges that floated rail cars across the bay to Norfolk, a service that continued under the Bay Coast Railroad until it ceased operations in 2018, leaving Cape Charles a railroad town without a railroad.

The Cape Charles Historic District and Stratton Manor are both listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today the town has rebuilt itself around tourism, with a free public beach on the Chesapeake Bay, a marina and harbor, a golf resort, and a walkable historic downtown of shops, restaurants, and galleries.

Cape Charles faces west across the Chesapeake Bay, so its beach is known for sunsets over the water.