Nine Mile Road is a historic highway located in Henrico County and the independent city of Richmond, Virginia, USA. It was named for its length between a junction with the Williamsburg-Richmond Stage Road (present-day U.S. Route 60) at Seven Pines and Richmond, which had replaced Williamsburg as the capital city of Virginia in 1780.
The Nine Mile Road was a major artery during the Peninsula Campaign during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Successfully defending Richmond, Confederate General Robert E. Lee maintained headquarters there at Dabbs House during the Seven Days Battles in the summer of 1862.
In 1888, the Seven Pines Railway Company was chartered and built an electric trolleycar line along the entire length to reach the National Cemetery at Seven Pines. Wealthy Winthrop, Massachusetts developer Edmund Sewell Read planned and built the new community of Highland Springs along the line.
At the eastern terminus, after World War I, Oliver J. Sands, the President of the Richmond-Fairfield Railway Company (a successor to the Seven Pines Railway), led an investment group which purchased government surplus houses. The community chose the name Sandston in his honor.
In modern times, the Nine Mile Road carries State Route 33 from Richmond towards its eastern terminus near Deltaville at Stingray Point on the Chesapeake Bay.
Famous quotes containing the words mile and/or road:
“smile
As you find a rhythm
Working you, slow mile by mile,
Into your proper haunt
Somewhere, well out, beyond . . .”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own—the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple—a few plain words—”My Heart Laid Bare.” But—this little book must be true to its title.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)