The year that Teddy Roosevelt ran for reelection, Henry Huttleston Rogers decided to build a Class I railroad out of his own pocket, which was well-lined with Standard Oil millions. Right through the Panic of 1907 he continued to sink those millions into what became the Virginian Railway, a 600-mile line from Hampton Roads, Virginia to the New River coal fields in Deepwater, West Virginia. It cost Rogers between $30,000,000 and $40,000,000, and was one of the few railroads financed entirely by one man.

Despite efforts to stop them, Rogers and his engineer, William Nelson Page, built the "Mountains to Sea" railroad right under the noses of the big railroads and the elite “robber baron” industrialists who controlled them. They used newer technologies and engineering not available when the older lines were built. The Virginian achieved best efficiencies in the mountains, in rolling piedmont, and in flat tidewater terrain. Known for operating the largest and best steam, electric, and diesel motive power, it was called the "Richest Little Railroad in the World."

The Virginian was built to carry bituminous coal, and it maintained its success by concentrating on that one rail line, and that one product. Rogers' Virginian was so solvent that in December, 1935, a Wall Street banking group easily marketed a $10,000,000 issue of the road's 6% preferred stock at the thumping fat price of $112 per share.