New historical markers coming to roadsides in Virginia will highlight events, schools, churches, communities, a health facility, a motel, political activism, and persons important in Virginia’s African-American history in Middlesex, Charles City, Chesterfield, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg and Nottoway counties and the cities of Lynchburg, Portsmouth, Richmond, and Winchester. And five markers will focus on additional significant persons, events, and historic places including a Union Prisoner of War Camp site in Lynchburg, a circa 1832 federal-style brick house in Craig County, a late-19th- and early-20th-century Springs Resort in Montgomery County, the topic of school desegregation in Chesterfield County, and Virginia’s first female colonial printer in York County.
The Virginia Board of Historic Resources approved the markers earlier this month during its quarterly meeting hosted by the Department of Historic Resources (DHR).
After approval by the Board of Historic Resources, it can take upwards of three months or more before a new marker is ready for installation. The marker’s sponsor covers the required $2,880 manufacturing expenses for a new sign.
Virginia’s historical highway marker program began in 1927 with installation of the first markers along U.S. Route 1. It is considered the oldest such program in the nation.
The additional new markers recognize:
- St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Lunenburg County.
- Wharton Memorial Baptist Church Complex in Mecklenburg County.
- An African American Family of Doctors in Winchester.
- Birthplace of Henrietta Lacks in Roanoke.
- Piedmont Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Nottoway County.
- Colbrook Motel in Chesterfield County.
- Black Political Activism in Charles City.
- Bellevue in Craig County.
- Union Prisoner of War Camp in Lynchburg.
- Crockett Springs Resort in Montgomery County.
- School Desegregation Controversy in Chesterfield County.
- Clementina Rind in York County.
- Lincolnsville in Portsmouth.
- Dr. Gordon Blaine Hancock in Richmond.
