Orleans Cross Roads is an unincorporated

Unincorporated area

In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not a part of any municipality.To "incorporate" in this context means to form a municipal corporation, a city, town, or village with its own government. An unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a municipal government...

 hamlet

Hamlet (place)

A hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community. Historically, when a hamlet became large enough to justify building a church, it was then classified as a village...

 that lies on the western flanks of Sideling Hill

Sideling Hill

Sideling Hill is a long, steep, narrow mountain ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains, located in Washington County in western Maryland and adjacent West Virginia and Pennsylvania, USA...

 on the Potomac River

Potomac River

The Potomac River flows into the Chesapeake Bay, located along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States. The river is approximately long, with a drainage area of about 14,700 square miles...

 in Morgan County

Morgan County, West Virginia

Morgan County is a county located in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of 2010, it's population was 17,541. Its county seat is Berkeley Springs. The county is one of three in Hagerstown-Martinsburg, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area...

, West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

. To its south, Rockwell Run

Rockwell Run

Rockwell Run is a mountain stream in Morgan County, West Virginia. It is a tributary of the Potomac River.The Rockwell Formation is named after Rockwell Run, where exposures of the formation were first described by Stose and Swartz in 1912.-References:...

, a mountain stream

Stream

A stream is a body of water with a current, confined within a bed and stream banks. Depending on its locale or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to as a branch, brook, beck, burn, creek, "crick", gill , kill, lick, rill, river, syke, bayou, rivulet, streamage, wash, run or...

 fed by springs, empties into the Potomac. Orleans Cross Roads lies along the old Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first common carrier railroad. It came into being mostly because the city of Baltimore wanted to compete with the newly constructed Erie Canal and another canal being proposed by Pennsylvania, which...

 directly across the river from Little Orleans

Little Orleans, Maryland

Little Orleans is an unincorporated community in Allegany County, Maryland. Little Orleans is located on the Potomac River at the mouth of Fifteenmile Creek across from Orleans Cross Roads, West Virginia. Little Orleans was served by the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, and by the Western Maryland...

. It is accessible by way of Orleans Road (CR 18/1) from Cacapon Road (West Virginia Route 9) via Detour Road (CR 18).

Once the site of a functioning station on the B&O, Orleans Cross Roads also had its own operating post office. The community and post office were often known as Orleans Cross Roads or Orleans Crossroads while its station was known as Orleans Road Station. It is still inhabited today and is the site of the historic Orleans Cross Roads Methodist Episcopal Church, built in the 1850s.