Qualla: Suffolk, Virginia

Suffolk, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TSWindustries, CC0. Amedeo Obici came to America from a small town called Oderzo in northern Italy. He landed in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, made a living selling roasted peanuts, and in 1913 brought his Planters Nut and Chocolate Company to Suffolk, Virginia, where the peanut fields stretched in every direction. The mascot he gave to his company - a monocled, top-hatted cartoon legume named Mr. Peanut - was born here in Suffolk. For decades the local AM radio station called itself WLPM, short for the World's Largest Peanut Market. The station is gone, the company has changed hands several times, but Suffolk still throws a Peanut Festival every fall, and Obici's name is on the hospital, the highway, and the sister-city plaque that pairs Suffolk with Oderzo.

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Image: TSWindustries | CC0

Suffolk, Virginia: From Constant's Warehouse

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Alter from Newport News, USA, CC BY 2.0. The town was founded in 1742 on the Nansemond River as a port at the head of navigation. The Nansemond people had lived in this country before colonization, and their name still marks the river and the former county. The English settlement was first called Constant's Warehouse, f...

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Image: Tony Alter from Newport News, USA | CC BY 2.0

Suffolk, Virginia: The Peanut and the Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Capt1922, CC BY-SA 3.0. Peanuts shaped the city the way iron shaped Pittsburgh. Planters made Suffolk a processing center for a crop the surrounding fields could grow in volume, and the industry pulled in workers, rail lines, warehouses, and Italian engineers. Obici grew rich and gave a great deal of hi...

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Image: Capt1922 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Suffolk, Virginia: Railroads and Beltways

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: Kubigula, CC BY-SA 3.0. Two railroads ran through Suffolk before the Civil War - the Portsmouth and Roanoke and the Norfolk and Petersburg - and four more were added afterward. The Seaboard Coast Line station still stands on North Main Street, now the Seaboard Station Railroad Museum, where a model trai...

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Image: User: Kubigula | CC BY-SA 3.0

Suffolk, Virginia: The Lighthouse and the Cyber Commands

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthew W. King, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lockheed Martin built its Center for Innovation in Suffolk around a freestanding lighthouse and named the campus, with appropriate cheek, The Lighthouse. Raytheon manufactures air-launched decoy jammers here. After the Joint Forces Command disbanded in 2011, the buildings did not...

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Image: Matthew W. King | CC BY-SA 4.0

Suffolk, Virginia: Two Storms

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Wiseman, CC BY 3.0. On April 28, 2008, just after four in the afternoon, an EF3 tornado dropped on Suffolk. It came down more than once, tore a swath north and west of downtown past the Sentara Obici Hospital, and rolled through the Driver neighborhood. More than 120 homes and twelve businesses were...

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Image: Andrew Wiseman | CC BY 3.0