Qualla: Danville, Virginia

Danville, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. William Byrd named the river. In 1728, the English colonist had been sent by Virginia to survey the boundary with North Carolina, and he camped one summer evening upstream of the spot that would later become Danville. He had felt, he wrote, that he had wandered from Dan to Beersheba — the biblical phrase for traversing the length of a country — and so he called the river the Dan. He also prophesied a future settlement nearby, where people would live, in his words, with much comfort and gaiety of Heart. Two hundred and ninety-eight years later, his prediction has held up, though the heart of Danville has been tested in ways Byrd could not have imagined.

Read more: Danville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

Danville, Virginia: Tobacco, Cotton, and the Confederacy's Last Week

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MarmadukePercy, CC BY-SA 3.0. The settlement that became Danville started in 1792 at a fordable stretch of the river, was called Wynne's Falls after its first settler, and was renamed Danville by the Virginia General Assembly in November 1793, the same year a state-authorized tobacco warehouse opened at the f...

Read more: Danville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: MarmadukePercy | CC BY-SA 3.0

Danville, Virginia: The Danville Massacre and a Stolen Century

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miguel Gereda, CC BY-SA 4.0. After Reconstruction, Danville had a majority African American population and was politically represented by African American members of the biracial Readjuster Party, which had taken control of the city council in 1882. White Democrats in the region perceived this arrangement as...

Read more: Danville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: Miguel Gereda | CC BY-SA 4.0

Danville, Virginia: Bloody Monday, 1963

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mwanner, Talk, CC BY-SA 3.0. Eight decades later, the civil rights movement came to Danville. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. visited the city and spoke at High Street Baptist Church, saying the police brutality he had observed in Danville was the worst he had seen in the South. On June 10, 1963, a date ...

Read more: Danville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: Mwanner | Talk | CC BY-SA 3.0

Danville, Virginia: From Wreck of the Old 97 to the River District

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MarmadukePercy, CC BY-SA 3.0. On September 27, 1903, the Southern Railway's fast mail train Old 97 ran behind schedule across a high trestle over the Dan River valley. The engineer gave her full throttle, the train jumped the tracks, and engine and five cars plunged into the ravine. Eleven people died. The wr...

Read more: Danville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: MarmadukePercy | CC BY-SA 3.0