Through its collection of late-19th-century railroad buildings, Beach Station in Chesterfield County constitutes a rare surviving example of a village type once common throughout the United States. Constructed in 1890, the buildings were on the Brighthope Mining Company line, the first railway developed to transport coal between the Clover Hill mines and Chester Station in the county. Over time, the Brighthope company expanded its business to include the transport of lumber, farm produce, and passengers. The Farmville and Powhatan Railway, and its successor, the Tidewater and Western Railway, also operated from Beach Station, until the station closed in 1917. Today, the complex consists of a former post office, railway depot and railway shanties, a general store, and two houses built by the Purdue family, who owned the property. The post office is the only known surviving 19th-century post office in Chesterfield County. Beach Station represents an important vestige of the county’s transportation-related past and its coal mining heritage, which traces back to the mid-18th-century.