 For similar reasons, 17th century era Fort Henry was built at the order of the Virginia House of Burgesses at Petersburg in 1645 to protect the river traffic.As railroads were being constructed and extended in the state in the 1830s and 1840s, Petersburg was developed as a major transfer point for both north-south and east-west competitors.The Petersburg Railroad, authorized in 1830, three years after the first American railway, the B.& O. in Baltimore, by the state legislatures of both Virginia and North Carolina to the south, which opened in 1833.