History:

Parksley is a nice place to live, but you probably wouldn't want to visit there. Not unless, that is, you are one of those who can appreciate the virtues of small town America, of which virtues Parksley has more than its share.
Parksley is a planned community, a rarity on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The town father was Henry R. Bennett, a traveling salesman from Delaware who, when the railroad was being built in 1884, envisioned the possibility of a thriving town at this point. With friends and relatives Bennett formed the Parksley Land Improvement Company, purchased 160 acres from farmer Benjamin Parks, and laid out a completely new town around the railroad.
Henry Bennett did everything in his power to make his little town a model community. He wrote into its charter a clause to the effect that if alcoholic beverages were ever sold on any lot in town, that lot would revert to the Company (they did not live to see the state owned liquor store on the street that bears his name). All stores/businesses were gathered into a commercial district in the center of town near the railroad. Blocks of land were set apart for schools, parks, acres for churches. Streets, well before the advent of the automobile, were made wide, laid out in regular patterns. Blacks were segregated into their own section on the southern edge of town, where one street was named for abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Not everyone appreciated such efforts, however. Benjamin Parks, the original resident, soon quit his home for a new farm on the Seaside.
Parksley was planned and settled by northerners - Bennett's associates were from Dover, Philadelphia, Boston- even the street names seem a little foreign to the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Dunne, Patton, Cassatt were named for railroad executives, the last of them for Alexander Cassatt, brother of artist Mary Cassatt. Several streets were named for members of Bennett's family-Catherine for his mother, Jones Maxwell for brothers-in-law. Two streets were named for Mary Cooke, a fiancée who died before she could marry Bennett. When Bennett finally did marry a New Yorker named Phoebe Bell, someone asked her what she thought of Mary Cooke's streets; replied Phoebe, "She got the streets, I got the man."
As Bennett had foreseen, Parksley grew rapidly, and within a short time was one of the major towns on the peninsula. When it incorporated in 1904 the town fathers drew the boundaries so as to exclude the black section, known today as Whitesville, it boasted a hotel, banks, numerous stores businesses, a school, several churches, a local newspaper. The town was by then one of the most up-to-date places around, its homes admired for the latest in architecture style, its people prosperous and well-traveled. Parksley was the first town on the Shore whose homes were lit by electricity, one of the first places on the peninsula to see automobiles, indoor bathrooms, and permanent waves.
Parksley has never ceased to grow, and now after a century boasts a population just short of 1,000. It is the closest thing the Eastern Shore of Virginia offers to a Victorian town. Large handsome houses line its tree-shaded streets. Though Victorian styles were always used with restraint on the Shore, many of Parksley's older homes are admirable examples of the Victorian railroad era (Mary Street near the railroad offers a nice cluster of them). The downtown section on Dunne Avenue is still vibrant, but has lost much of its older facade, in the Farmer's & Merchants Bank can be seen a large mural by a local artist depicting downtown Parksley as it appeared in 1920.The specific sights of Parksley are few, the town itself its own best attraction. Almost like a scene from an earlier era, Parksley is the kind of place where kids gather to play baseball in the schoolyard, families chat at evening on the front porch swing. Not the most exciting place in the world to see, but - as Henry Bennett wanted it to be - - a very nice place to live.