From shipping and hydropower to fishing, boating, and bathing (yes, the traditional kind!), early life in Richmond revolved around the James River. Although the river was the primary reason for the city’s founding, by the mid-twentieth century, it had become…
In 1865, a Richmond society teenager named Mary Tinsley Greenhow fell off her horse. As a result, she was paralyzed and required constant care. And although her family could afford the round-the-clock care she needed, Greenhow became preoccupied with those…
Back in 1931, a Richmond man named Jimmie Scott purchased four forested acres in the quiet Rothesay neighborhood. Just south of Windsor Farms, on a bluff overlooking the James River, those wooded acres concealed a big secret: an abandoned quarry. There…
When the country’s first bicycling craze swept the South in the 1890s, a Richmond businessman and philanthropist opened a 9-acre cycling club in Henrico County, just outside the city. He died a few years later, in 1897, but with its cycling paths…
Only weeks after its founding in December 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was charged by Congress to establish federal air quality standards. The Clean Air Act passed as a direct response to the smog that afflicted most American cities,…
In 1913, a theater opened in Jackson Ward that would become the center of African American arts and entertainment in Richmond for the next fifty years. In an officially segregated Richmond, the Hippodrome Theater was one of only a few venues…
Named after a 21,000-foot inactive volcano in Ecuador, Chimborazo Hill has a dramatic, if not explosive, history of racial conflict that spans more than two centuries. In 1656, it was the suspected site of the Battle of Bloody Run, which pitted…
In 1880, a lauded Confederate photographer, made famous for his images taken at Fort Sumter, moved his family and his photography studio to Richmond, Virginia. For the next two decades, George Cook (shown here in his studio at 913 East Main…
With the establishment of Jamestown, a long and complicated relationship between Native Americans – the first Virginians – and English colonists began. As John Smith explored the surrounding territory in 1607, he traded with one tribe that lived in villages…
In 1970, in order to satisfy a federal mandate to desegregate Richmond Public Schools, Judge Robert Merhige, Jr. ordered the implementation of a busing program that would attempt to achieve racial balance in the school system. At the time of…
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