Because of the increasing complexity of public and private business in the late nineteenth century and the press of other duties -upon the officers of the board, its membership was changed -once again. The state Constitution of 1902 created the State Corporation Commission, whose duty it Was to regulate all corporations (including those concerned with transportation) that did business in Virginia. The constitution also provided that

upon the organization of the State Corporation Commission, the Board of Public Works and the office of Railroad Commissioner, shall cease to exist; and all books, papers and documents pertaining thereto, shall be transferred to, and become a part of the records of, the office of the State Corporation Commission.³

Since 1903 the State Corporation Commission has transferred several lots of the "books, papers and documents" of the Board of Public Works to the Archives Division of the Virginia State Library. In the 1920s and 1930s efforts were made to arrange the board's records, but the task was never completed, and no description of the records' original order was made. For the purposes of this inventory the arrangement im posed on the record group half a century ago was followed as long as it agreed with archival principles and facilitated easy access to researchers. This record group contains over eighty thousand items and over seven hundred volumes.

The inventory is divided into three parts, consisting of the administrative records of the board and of the railroad commissioner, the records of the internal improvement companies reporting to the board, and the field notes, maps, drawings, and plans pertaining to internal improvements. The entry for each series consists of the title of the series, the inclusive dates, and the approximate quantity of material. When necessary a brief statement describes the documents in the series.

The types of records available today are the result of the functions of the Board of Public Works, the railroad commissioner, and the various internal improvement companies. The records of the board itself concern its duties as a gatherer and dispenser of information relating to internal improvements, as well as its role as the administrator of the state's investment in the stock of the companies. The records thus created include minute books and journals of the proceedings and business of the board, as well as financial journals, ledgers, and account books. Letters and papers received by the board include those of the principal engineer and the special engineers, as well as general letters of inquiry and business correspondence.

Additional records were created by the extra duties assigned to the board by the General Assembly. Such duties included overseeing the geological survey of Virginia starting in 1835, issuing state internal improvement maps, supervising the production and distribution of salt during the Civil War, ensuring the free passage of fish up and down the navigable waters of Virginia in the late 1870s, and managing certain "waste and unappropriated lands" after the

3. Acts of Assembly, 1902-1904 (Richmond, 1902), 37.