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Midlothian, Virginia

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Midlothian, Virginia is an unincorporated place located in Chesterfield County, Virginia. Founded over 300 years ago as a coal mining village, it is now an outlying suburban community located well beyond the city limits in the Southside area of Richmond in the Richmond-Petersburg region.

It was named for the early 18th century coal mining enterprises of the Wooldridge brothers who came from the mining villages of East Lothian and West Lothian near Edinburgh, Scotland. In a compromise, the new venture was called Mid-Lothian. It produced the first commercially mined coal in the Virginia Colony and in what became the United States. By 1700, several mines were in development by French Huguenots and others. Shipment of coal began in the 1730s. Midlothian-area coal heated the U.S. White House for President Thomas Jefferson. Related transportation needs and innovations resulted in construction of an early toll road, the Manchester Turnpike in 1807 and the Chesterfield Railroad, the state's first in 1831, each to travel the 13 miles to the port of Manchester, just below the fall line of the James River. (Manchester, the original county seat of Chesterfield County, became an independent city and merged with Richmond in 1910). Near the mines, Coalfield Station was built in the early 1850s on the Richmond and Danville Railroad. The small village of shops, churches, and schools established nearby came to be called Midlothian.

In the 1920s, Midlothian's commercial village area along the Old Buckingham Road was sited on the new east-west U.S. Route 60 during the Good Roads Movement as automobiles became commonplace in the U.S. In the second half of the 20th century, as the residential area around Richmond grew, Midlothian evolved into an area of many middle class and upper-middle class neighborhoods. Notable major developments during that period including the large Salisbury community, named for the colonial-era home of Thomas Mann Randolph and later Virginia Governor Patrick Henry (1784-1786), and the massive Brandermill planned development sited on Swift Creek Reservoir.

In the 21st century, widespread Midlothian extends many miles beyond the former village area. It is located along the semi-circumferential limited access State Route 288 which links Interstate 64 with the State Route 76 toll road and Interstate 95 in the Richmond area's southwestern quadrant. Midlothian was ranked #37 in CNNMoney's list of "The Best Places to Live" in 2005. Recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau as a census-designated place (CDP), the community had a total population of 35,427 as of the 2000 census.

Geography

Location of Midlothian, Virginia
Location of Midlothian, Virginia

Midlothian is located in the Piedmont geologic region of the state, and is made up of mainly a hilled, fertile land (it is somewhat of a plain.)

Soil problems

A common soil type, termed "shrink-swell" has been found to underlie many neighborhoods that have grown up throughout the area. "Shrink-swell" is the term applied to the potential for volume change in a soil with a loss or gain in moisture. Expansive soils may occur throughout Virginia, but they especially pose a problem where rapid urbanization and development are occurring. In the late 1970's and early 1980's, Chesterfield County construction standards failed to take into account the unique requirements for building structures with foundations of sufficient depth and strength to insure against damage in so dynamic a geologic condition, with the result that some dwellings and other structures have suffered severe damage and required extensive remediation and repair to remain functional. Homeowner's received mitigation via a settlement with Chesterfield County in 1991, and building codes were adjusted to require soil testing throughout the affected areas in Chesterfield County.

Additionally, a type of fill dirt, comprised in part of the ash by-product of coal burning electric power generation facilities, was used in the site grading for a Home Depot store in the Midlothian area. That material proved sufficiently unstable that Home Depot had to completely raze its new store located off Midlothian Turnpike (U.S. Route 60) within the first year of its opening for business, to completely re-do the site preparation, and construct a new building. The contractor and their insurance company bore the cost for remedy at this commercial development as they were responsible for sourcing the substandard building materials.

Watersheds

The Midlothian area serves as the headwaters to a number of creeks which ultimately contribute their waters to the flow of the James River below the fall line at Richmond. These include Swift Creek and Falling Creek. The Swift Creek Reservoir serves as the major source of fresh water for the county.

Demographics

Midlothian's demographics are much like Virginia's. Its inhabitants are predominantly Caucasian. The next biggest group is African-Americans, followed by Hispanics and Asians. The median household income per year in 2005 was $80,381.

Midlothian is comprised of many neighborhoods, shopping centers, schools, and churches, and includes a major regional shopping mall. There is very little farming and only light manufacturing around the new State Route 288. Some examples of neighborhoods around the Village of Midlothian just off Route 60 include Roxshire and Salisbury to the north and Walton Park, Queensmill, and Stonehenge West on the east. Woodlake and Brandermill are communities on Route 360 which include some houses with a Midlothian address, although most use a Chesterfield address.

History

Before the arrival of Europeans in the 17th century, the area was populated by Native Americans. Among these were the Monacan tribe, of a Siouan heritage, and they were often in conflict with the members of the Powhatan Confederacy of Virginia Algonquins, generally located to the east in the Tidewater area.

In the 18th century, French Huguenot settlers came to the area in the Virginia Colony to escape religious persecution in Europe. After the Monacan tribe of Native Americans left the area, the Huguenot settlers chose Manakintown for their new community. The location about 20 miles above the head of navigation on the James River at Richmond offered some desired isolation for them. With the coming of the Europeans, although there was some farming, the terrain was hilly and largely wooded, and shipping of farm products such as tobacco crops was not easy.

However, there was a greater natural resource than farmland as Midlothian history became largely one of coal mining and railroads. The geology of the area about 10 miles west of the fall line of the James River at near present-day Richmond, Virginia includes a basin of coal which was one of the earliest mined in the Virginia Colony. This natural resource was mined by the French Huguenot refugees and others who settled there beginning around 1700, and many coal-related enterprises in the Midlothian area of Chesterfield County began early in the 18th century.

Coal mining

The Village area of today's Midlothian started as a settlement of coal miners in the 1700s. In 1709, Midlothian produced the first commercially-mined coal in the United States. According to research by author Bettie Weaver, some of the first coal mines were controlled by the wealthy Wooldridge family. About 1745, two Wooldridge brothers came to Virginia from Scotland. They built their home nearby. The brothers came from separate Scottish mining villages, one from East Lothian, the other from West Lothian. In developing their new business in Virginia, they apparently compromised on the name, calling the mines the family owned "Mid-Lothian Mining Company". The name came to be used for the unincorporated town which grew in the area, and somewhere along the way, the name became one unhyphenated word: "Midlothian."

Among other participants in the area's emerging coal business was Colonel Henry "Harry" Heth, a businessman who emigrated from England about 1759, and established offices at Norfolk and Manchester. Several generations of his family were also involved in the business.

During the American Revolution, coal produced in the Midlothian coal pits supplied the cannon factory on the James River at Westham, upstream from Richmond, where it was used to produce shot and shells for the Continental Army. By the end of the Revolutionary War, coal mined in Chesterfield County was being shipped to Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Commenting on the area's coal in his Notes on the State of Virginia, written in 1781-82, then-Governor Thomas Jefferson stated: "The country on James river, from 15 to 20 miles above Richmond, and for several miles northward and southward, is replete with mineral coal of a very excellent quality." [1] He later ordered coal from the Black Heath Mine in Midlothian for use in the White House in Washington DC during his presidency.

As Jefferson noted, the coalfield basin west of Richmond extended north of the James River to the western portion of Henrico County. There, mines were active at places such as Gayton and Deep Run. In 1796, famed engineer and architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe toured the coal fields outside Richmond, declaring enthusiastically, "Such a mine of Wealth exists, I believe, nowhere else!"

By 1835, there were seven or eight major mines in the Midlothian area. Coal was the basis of the Midlothian area until the late 1800s when mining ended. Later attempts to reopen the mines were unsuccessful, but thanks to railroad access to Richmond, the village became a commuter town.

Early roads, first turnpike, and railroads

In 1804, a toll road, Manchester and Falling Creek Turnpike was built from Manchester to Falling Creek to ease traffic on what is now Old Buckingham Road. It was graveled in 1807, making it Virginia's first hard-surfaced road. That road's descendant is known as Midlothian Turnpike and carries U.S. Route 60.

By 1824, an estimated 70 to 100 wagons, each of which was loaded with four or five tons of coal, made a daily trip on the turnpike, transporting to the docks at the river near Manchester the million or more bushels (30,000 metric tons) of coal that were produced in Chesterfield County each year.

The heavily-loaded coal wagons tended to cut deep ruts in the turnpike between the mines at Midlothian and the docks at Manchester, raising clouds of dust in summer and churning the road into mud in the rainy season. As there were few options for shunpiking, citizens whose faster buggies dawdled along behind the lumbering wagons kept urging the state legislature to do something about it—a canal, a better road, but something.

The result was the Chesterfield Railroad, a 13 mile (21 km) mule- and gravity-powered line that connected the Midlothian coal mines with wharves that were located at Manchester, directly across from Richmond. Partially funded by the Virginia Board of Public Works, it began operating in 1831, was Virginia's first railroad, and was the second commercial railroad to be built in the United States. By 1850, though, the newer, steam-driven Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D) began operation to Coalfield Station, later renamed Midlothian, and the slower Chesterfield Railroad was quickly supplanted. In a financial reorganization, the R&D line through Midlothian became part of the Southern Railway system in 1894, and is now part of Norfolk Southern Railway.

According to the 1895 Virginia atlas, the population of Midlothian was 375.

20th century: village becomes suburban area

In the 20th century, coal mining died out, and the area became less populated, remaining largely wooded with farms scattered along mostly rural and dirt roads. Gradually, the highway network and the growth of metropolitan Richmond brought subdivisions. When the Swift Creek Reservoir was created, water and sewer service accelerated residential growth. The expansion of the area assigned to the Midlothian post office caused a much larger area to be considered "Midlothian" than the village area along Midlothian Turnpike, now designated U.S. Route 60. An extension of the Powhite Parkway in 1988 and widening of Midlothian Turnpike and Hull Street Road (U.S. Route 360) provided much-needed highway infrastructure as the area continued to grow in population, and forests were turned into subdivisions.

21st century: growth issues

Completion of State Route 288 in 2004 essentially brought Midlothian into the circumferential highway network of greater Richmond. Debate continues regarding whether the few remaining farms and forest areas will be developed with more subdivisions, allowing the western end of Chesterfield County to be essentially "built-out" in the manner that has occurred in other Virginia localities such as Fairfax and Arlington counties in Northern Virginia. In March 2006, that debate was settled when the county approved, after long debate, zoning for the [2]Watkins Centre, a large office complex and retail "lifestyle center" at the intersection of Route 288 and U.S. 60, just two miles west of the Village of Midlothian. One of Midlothian's high schools, James River High School, is part of Chesterfield County Public Schools and has won the President's Blue Ribbon School of Excellence Award.

Historic landmarks

Chesterfield County Historic Landmarks in the Midlothian area include:

  • Bellgrade, 11500 West Huguenot Road
  • Trabue's Tavern, 11940 Old Buckingham Road
  • Hallsborough Tavern, 16300 Midlothian Turnpike
  • Ivymount, 14111 Midlothian Turnpike
  • Southside Speedway, 12800 Genito Road
  • Chesterfield Railroad, portion of roadbed (visible off Sturbridge Drive south of Midlothian Turnpike behind Pocono Green Shopping Center)

Chesterfield Museum

An exhibit on local mining history in the Chesterfield Museum includes a length of iron rail from the incline railway, first in Virginia.

References

Suggested reading

  • Lutz, Frank E.. (1954) Chesterfield, An Old Virginia County, William Byrd Press, Inc., Richmond, Virginia.
  • O’Dell, Jeffrey M. (1983) Chesterfield County: Early Architecture and Historic Sites, Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, Chesterfield, Virginia.
  • Virginia State Library (1965) A Hornbook of Virginia History, Virginia Library Board, Richmond, Virginia.
  • Weaver, Bettie W. (1961—1962) The Mines of Midlothian, in Virginia Cavalcade Winter: pages 40—47.

37°30′22″N 77°38′57″W / 37.50611°N 77.64917°W / 37.50611; -77.64917

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