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Lynchburg, Virginia

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For other places with the same name, see Lynchburg (disambiguation).

Lynchburg, Virginia
Independent city
City of Lynchburg
Downtown Lynchburg skyline.
Seal Coat of arms Police patch
Nickname(s): "The Hill City"; "City of Seven Hills"
Location within the Commonwealth of Virginia
Lynchburg Location within the contiguous United States of America
Coordinates: 37°24′13″N 79°10′12″WCoordinates: 37°24′13″N 79°10′12″W
Country	United States
State	Virginia
Founded	1786
Incorporated (town)	1805
Incorporated (city)	1852
Named for	John Lynch
Government
• Type	Council–Manager
• Mayor	Treney Tweedy[1]
• Vice Mayor	Mary Jane Dolan[1]
• Council	Lynchburg City Council
Area [2]
• Independent city	49.53 sq mi (128.27 km2)
• Land	48.97 sq mi (126.84 km2)
• Water	0.55 sq mi (1.43 km2)
Elevation	630 ft (192 m)
Population  (2010)
• Independent city	75,568
• Estimate (2018)[3]	82,126
• Density	1,653.84/sq mi (638.55/km2)
• Urban	116,636 (US: 271st)
• Metro	260,320 (US: 184th)
• Demonym	Lynchburgian, Lynchburger
Time zone	UTC−5 (EST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−4 (EDT)
ZIP code(s)	24501, 24502, 24503, 24504, 24505, 24551
Area code(s)	434
FIPS code	51-47672
GNIS feature ID	1479007[4]
Major airport	LYH
Website	lynchburgva.gov

Downtown Lynchburg from Daniel's Hill at Point of Honor

Lynchburg City Hall

Lynchburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 75,568. The 2017 census estimates an increase to 81,000.^[5] Located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains along the banks of the James River, Lynchburg is known as the "City of Seven Hills" or the "Hill City".^[6] In the 1860s, Lynchburg was the only major city in Virginia that was not recaptured by the Union before the end of the American Civil War.^[7]
Lynchburg lies at the center of a wider metropolitan area close to the geographic center of Virginia. It is the fifth-largest MSA in Virginia, with a population of 260,320.^[8] It is the site of several institutions of higher education, including Virginia University of Lynchburg, University of Lynchburg, Randolph College, and Liberty University. Nearby cities include Roanoke, Charlottesville, and Danville.

Contents

• 1 History
  • 1.1 Founding and early growth
  • 1.2 American Civil War
  • 1.3 Postwar recovery
  • 1.4 World War II and after
  • 1.5 Modern revitalization
  • 1.6 Timeline
• 2 Geography
  • 2.1 Climate
  • 2.2 Seven Hills
  • 2.3 Adjacent counties
• 3 Demographics
• 4 Economy
  • 4.1 Top employers
• 5 Government
• 6 Education
  • 6.1 Colleges and universities
    • 6.1.1 Public schools
    • 6.1.2 Private schools
  • 6.2 Primary and secondary schools
    • 6.2.1 Public schools
    • 6.2.2 Private schools
• 7 Health care
• 8 Transportation
  • 8.1 Local transit
  • 8.2 Intercity transit
    • 8.2.1 Bus
    • 8.2.2 Rail
    • 8.2.3 Air
    • 8.2.4 Highway
• 9 Arts and culture
• 10 Attractions and entertainment
• 11 Sports and recreation
• 12 Neighborhoods
• 13 Notable people
• 14 Media
  • 14.1 Print
  • 14.2 Television
  • 14.3 Radio
• 15 Sister cities
• 16 Politics
• 17 See also
• 18 Notes
• 19 References
• 20 Bibliography
• 21 External links

History

Monacan people and other Siouan Tutelo-speaking tribes had lived in the area since at least 1270, driving the Virginia Algonquians eastward to the coastal areas. Explorer John Lederer visited one of the Siouan villages (Saponi) in 1670, on the Staunton River at Otter Creek, southwest of the present-day city, as did the Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam expedition in 1671.
Siouan peoples occupied this area until about 1702; they had become weakened because of high mortality from infectious diseases. The Seneca people, who were part of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy based in New York, defeated them. The Seneca had ranged south while seeking new hunting grounds through the Shenandoah Valley to the West. At the Treaty of Albany in 1718, the Iroquois Five Nations ceded control of their land east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, including Lynchburg, to the Colony of Virginia; they confirmed this in 1721.

Founding and early growth

First settled by Anglo-Americans in 1757, Lynchburg was named for its founder, John Lynch. When about 17 years old, he started a ferry service at a ford across the James River to carry traffic to and from New London, where his parents had settled. The "City of Seven Hills" quickly developed along the hills surrounding Lynch's Ferry.
In 1786, Virginia's General Assembly recognized Lynchburg, the settlement by Lynch's Ferry on the James River. The James River Company had been incorporated the previous year (and President George Washington given stock, which he donated to charity) in order to "improve" the river down to Richmond, which was growing and was named as the new Commonwealth's capital. Shallow-draft James River bateau provided a relatively easy means of transportation through Lynchburg down to Richmond and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean. Rocks, downed trees, and flood debris were constant hazards, so their removal became expensive ongoing maintenance. Lynchburg became a tobacco trading, then commercial, and much later an industrial center.
Eventually the state built a canal and towpath along the river to make transportation by the waterway easier, and especially to provide a water route around the falls at Richmond, which prevented through navigation by boat. By 1812, U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall, who lived in Richmond, reported on the navigation difficulties and construction problems on the canal and towpath.
The General Assembly recognized the settlement's growth by incorporating Lynchburg as a town in 1805; it was not incorporated as a city until 1852. In between, Lynch built Lynchburg's first bridge across the James River, a toll structure that replaced his ferry in 1812. A toll turnpike to Salem, Virginia was begun in 1817. Lynch died in 1820 and was buried beside his mother in the graveyard of the South River Friends Meetinghouse. Quakers later abandoned the town because of their opposition to slaveholding. Presbyterians took over the meetinghouse and adapted it as a church. It is now preserved as a historic site.
To avoid the many visitors at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson in 1806 developed a plantation and house near Lynchburg, called Poplar Forest. He often visited the town, noting, "Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be useful to the town of Lynchburg. I consider it as the most interesting spot in the state." In 1810, Jefferson wrote, "Lynchburg is perhaps the most rising place in the U.S.... It ranks now next to Richmond in importance...."^{[citation needed]}
Early Lynchburg residents were not known for their religious enthusiasm. The established Church of England supposedly built a log church in 1765. In 1804, evangelist Lorenzo Dow wrote: "...where I spoke in the open air in what I conceived to be the seat of Satan's Kingdom. Lynchburg was a deadly place for the worship of God'." That referred to the lack of churches, which was corrected the following year. Itinerant Methodist Francis Asbury visited the town; Methodists built its first church in 1805. Lynchburg hosted the last Virginia Methodist Conference that bishop Asbury attended (February 20, 1815).^[9] As Lynchburg grew, prostitution and other "rowdy" activities became part of the urban mix of the river town. They were often ignored, if not accepted, particularly in a downtown area referred to as the "Buzzard's Roost."^{[citation needed]} Methodist preacher and later bishop John Early became one of Lynchburg's civic leaders; unlike early Methodist preachers who had urged abolition of slavery during the Great Awakening; Early was of a later generation that had accommodated to this institution in the slave societies of the South.
On December 3, 1840, the James River and Kanawha Canal from Richmond reached Lynchburg. It was extended as far as Buchanan, Virginia in 1851, but never reached a tributary of the Ohio River as originally planned.^[10] Lynchburg's population exceeded 6,000 by 1840, and a water works system was built. Floods in 1842 and 1847 wreaked havoc with the canal and towpath. Both were repaired. Town businessmen began to lobby for a railroad, but Virginia's General Assembly refused to fund such construction. In 1848 civic boosters began selling subscriptions for the Lynchburg and Tennessee Railroad.
By the 1850s, Lynchburg (along with New Bedford, Massachusetts) was among the richest towns per capita in the US.^[11] Tobacco (including the manufacture of plug tobacco in factories using rented slave labor), slave-trading, general commerce, and iron and steel manufacturing powered the economy.^[12][13]
Railroads had become the wave of the future. Construction on the new Lynchburg and Tennessee railroad had begun in 1850 and a locomotive tested the track in 1852. A locomotive called the "Lynchburg" blew up in Forest, Virginia (near Poplar Forest) later that year, showing the new technology's dangers. By the Civil War, two more railroads had been built, including the South Side Railroad from Petersburg. It became known as the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad in 1870, then a line in the Norfolk and Western Railway, and last as part of the Norfolk Southern Railway.^[14] The Orange and Alexandria Railroad stopped in Lynchburg.