Qualla: Chesterfield County, Virginia

Chesterfield County, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Shelton32, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is a particular kind of geographic luck in being the county between two rivers. Chesterfield County sits in the cradle of the James and the Appomattox, just south of Richmond, where the rocky Piedmont falls away into the sandy Coastal Plain. That fall line - the place where ships could go no farther upriver - made everything else happen. The first ironworks in what would become the United States rose on Falling Creek in 1619. Coal was discovered around 1701 by Huguenot refugees. The first railroad in Virginia, the Chesterfield Railroad, opened in 1831 to haul that coal. The brand of cigarettes Americans smoked through two world wars borrowed its name from the county. And in 2024, a Massachusetts startup picked a stretch of Chesterfield ground for the world's first grid-scale commercial fusion reactor. Five hundred years from now, historians may still be sorting through what happened here.

Image: James Shelton32 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Chesterfield County, Virginia: The Earl Who Never Came

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mathew Benjamin Brady, Public domain. Chesterfield County split from Henrico County on May 25, 1749, and was named for Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, an English politician then famous for his polished writings and impeccable manners. The Earl never visited. He probably never thought about the place much a...

Image: Mathew Benjamin Brady | Public domain

Chesterfield County, Virginia: Coal, Rails, and the First Railroad

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Morgan Riley, CC BY 3.0. Around 1701, French Huguenot refugees in the Midlothian area found coal seams running through the Piedmont. By 1709, William Byrd II was writing in his diary that "the coaler found the coal mine very good and sufficient to furnish several generations." The estimate was correct. C...

Image: Morgan Riley | CC BY 3.0

Chesterfield County, Virginia: The Civil War Crucible

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. During the Civil War, Chesterfield's geography turned strategic again. Drewry's Bluff on the James became the key defensive point blocking Union gunboats from steaming up the river to Richmond. During the Siege of Petersburg (1864-1865), a long line of trenches and earthworks ran...

Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Chesterfield County, Virginia: Annexation and the Voting Rights Suit

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Shelton32, CC BY-SA 3.0. Chesterfield's twentieth century included one of the most consequential annexation fights in Virginia history. The City of Richmond had been chipping away at the county for decades when, in 1969, the so-called Horner-Bagley Compromise transferred 23 square miles - including 47,26...

Image: James Shelton32 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chesterfield County, Virginia: What's Next: Fusion

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tadpole1969, Public domain. In 2024, Commonwealth Fusion Systems - a Massachusetts startup spun out of MIT research - announced plans to build the world's first grid-scale commercial fusion power plant at the James River Industrial Center in Chesterfield County. The county approved the conditional use permi...

Image: Tadpole1969 | Public domain