History of Norfolk

exation. In 1906, the city annexed the incorporated town of Berkley, which stretched the city limits across the Elizabeth River. In 1923, the city expanded to include Sewell's Point, Willoughby Spit, the town of Campostella, and the Ocean View area. The city included the Navy Base and miles of beach property fronting on Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay. After a smaller annexation in 1959, and a 1988 land swap with Virginia Beach, the city assumed its current boundaries.

With the dawn of the Interstate Highway System, new highways opened in the region. A series of bridges and tunnels constructed during fifteen years linked Norfolk with the Peninsula, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach. In 1952, the Downtown Tunnel opened to connect Norfolk with the city of Portsmouth. In 1991, the new Downtown Tunnel/Berkley Bridge complex opened a new system of multiple lanes of highway and interchanges connecting Downtown Norfolk and Interstate 464 with the Downtown Tunnel tubes. Additional bridges and tunnels included the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel in 1957, the Midtown Tunnel in 1962, and the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway (Interstate 264 and State Route 44) in 1967.

In reaction to the Supreme Court ruling in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case which held that segregated schools were unconstitutional and ordered integration, Virginia pursued a policy of "massive resistance". The Virginia General Assembly prohibited state funding for integrated public schools. Norfolk's private schools had voluntarily integrated by choosing to comply with the Brown decision. In 1958, United States district courts in Virginia ordered schools to open for the first time on a racially-integrated basis. In response, Governor James Lindsay Almond, Jr. ordered the schools closed. The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals declared the state law to be in conflict