BY ERIC HODIES
VIRGINIA BEACH — Sixty years ago, Princess Anne County merged with the city of Virginia Beach. The consolidation of the primarily agricultural county with the much smaller resort city was not without its opponents and challenges, but ultimately voters overwhelmingly favored the merger.
The vote in January 1962 left government leaders of the new 310-square-mile city with much work to do in a very short time. Despite a checklist of hundreds of items to resolve, the merger on Jan. 1, 1963, proceeded smoothly.
The modern city was born.
The Princess Anne County/Virginia Beach Historical Society is hosting a program on Sunday, March 5, looking back at the merger and how it impacted residents. Author and retired Virginia Wesleyan University history professor Dr. Stephen Mansfield is organizing the presentation, which is free and open to the public.
During the first portion of the program, society members Al Chewning and Drummond Ball will present pros and cons of the merger, followed by Mansfield speaking about the implementation of the consolidation.
In 1962, Virginia Beach was a nationally known resort city. Princess Anne County was predominately a farming community known as the home of the largest hog operation east of the Mississippi River.
“Many of the county residents who opposed the merger were concerned that their agricultural interests would not be fully addressed,” Mansfield said during a recent interview. “It was quite a contrast with the issues facing residents of the resort city, and just one of many challenges civic leaders worked to resolve.”
“Like many people, I don’t like change, preferring the status quo, so I feel like I would have voted against the merger if I had been old enough,” said Chewning, who was born in Princess Anne County. “The idea of a group from the much smaller city having outsized control would have given me pause.”
Princess Anne County residents were also concerned about an unfair tax burden.
“The Dome opened in 1958 and had been running a deficit,” Mansfield said. “County residents were concerned they would be responsible for picking up the tab for a Virginia Beach project in need of funds.”
At the time of the merger, farming and tourism brought in roughly equal revenue, according to Mansfield.
The list of items to resolve also included mail delivery, as the county and city had 230 street duplications. One of the final details was to set up an 11-member City Council.
“To many residents, the change in representation would have been an important aspect of the merger,” Mark Reed, the city’s historical preservation planner, said.
Some county residents were worried Norfolk, which annexed 13.5 square miles in 1959, had its eyes on further expansion. Norfolk opposed the merger with Virginia Beach and at one point threatened to cut off the county’s water service.
Leading up to the vote, elected officials met with city and county residents at community and religious events to convince the public of the benefits of the consolidation.
It was effective. The vote was in favor of the merger by a wide margin, 7,476 to 1,759 in the county and 1,539 to 242 in Virginia Beach, according to Mansfield’s book Princess Anne County and Virginia Beach: A Pictorial History.
Employment and recreational opportunities in the new city made it an attractive place to live, and the combined population soared from 111,400 at the time of the merger to 198,700 a decade later.
Today, the Princess Anne name lives on through city schools, a key road and more — even a community newspaper — within a greater city that boast more than 457,000 citizens.
The Princess Anne County/Virginia Beach Historical Society invites the public to the program at 2:30 p.m., Sunday, March 5, at 2412 N. Landing Road, in building 20-A in the historic courthouse complex. The nonprofit society was chartered in 1961, the year that merger discussions began.
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