On May 24, 1607, Christopher Newport and John Smith, along with the members of their expedition party, reached the fall line of the James River. To claim the territory for King James I, Newport planted a wooden cross.  Three hundred years…

Before the city appropriated funds for the secondary education of African American children, that instruction was given at the Colored Normal School. Historically, “normal schools” trained teachers of all races. Founded in 1865 with the help of Freedmen’s Bureau funds,…

In 1899, the Independent Order of St. Luke was teetering toward bankruptcy. A benevolent society that provided burial insurance for members of Richmond’s African American community, the organization had just a thousand members and a little over thirty dollars in its…

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…