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:
“I have got enough of the old masters! Brown says he has “shook” them, and I think I will shake them, too. You wander through a mile of picture galleries and stare stupidly at ghastly old nightmares done in lampblack and lightning, and listen to the ecstatic encomiums of the guides, and try to get up some enthusiasm, but it won’t come.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“But, where the road runs near the stream,
Oft through the trees they catch a glance
Of passing troops in the sun’s beam—
Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance!
Forth to the world those soldiers fare,
To life, to cities, and to war!”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)