Signpost, VA - (2 miles above Horntown) is named for a directional sign that once stood in the fork of the road here. When a post office was established in 1898, the government disallowed the name Signpost, so postmaster Columbus Davis invented the name Silva. The little store that once held the post office now stands in a backyard on the left opposite the church. Sinnickson House sits back from the Seaside Road on the right, .7 mile north of town; built by R.B. Sinnickson soon after his entry into this area in 1886, it is remarkable chiefly for its size. Just beyond it, the Seaside Road crosses Swan's Gut Creek; from the causeway here is visible Chincoteague and the lighthouse on Assateague Island, eight miles distant.
2 miles above Signpost, Seaside Road passes into Maryland, becoming Rought 12. From this point it is a distance of 12 miles to Snow Hill, and an additional 24 miles, via U.S. Routes 113 and 50, to Ocean City.
The Upper Seaside tour turns right towards Greenbackville on #679, the left shoulder of which forms the Maryland-Virginia boundary.
Greenbackville and Franklin City - cling to the last available piece of land on the Eastern Shore of Virginia at the end of #679, two villages on an improbable site sharing an interesting history.
Greenbackville took shape in the late 1860s when there was an influx of would-be watermen anxious to "make a killing" by harvesting the oysters of Chincoteague Bay. Matthias Lindsay, who lived in what is now Captain's Cove, agreed to sell them land on which to live, at $100 of government greenback money for every acre of the almost worthless marshland. "One hundred dollars an acre," exclaimed Henry Pope, who lived alone on those marshes. "That shouldn't be called land - that should be called greenback," and thus he named the town. Ten years later, Judge John R. Franklin, who lived across the line in Maryland, persuaded the railroad to extend its line down to his property just east of the new village, and there on an even marshier spot he created Franklin City, an entire little island, seven miles across the open water, to swifter shipping of its produce to northern markets, and Greenbackville and Franklin City thrived as the shipping point. The depletion of oysters from Chincoteague Bay and the opening of a causeway to the island in 1922 doomed such prosperity, and the two villages went into slow decline. After a storm swept high tides through the streets in 1962, Franklin City was abandoned altogether, its few remaining buildings now a "ghost town" without inhabitants.
Legal Stuff
*OFF 13: The Eastern Shore of Virginia Guidebook. Mariner, Kirk. Copyrighted by Kirk Mariner. Miona Publications. 1987 New Church, VA. 180 pages.
OFF 13 is a great book for those who wish to learn more about the history of the Eastern Shore of Virginia, especially the indvidual towns and historic landmarks. A must for any historian of such an area with so little written literature pertaining to its rich heritage.