Richmond Virginia's Geography

Richmond - A City of Seven Hills… Or Maybe Just One River?

People love to say that Richmond is built on seven hills. However, no one can agree on which seven hills really count as the “seven hills of Richmond.” Longtime Richmond journalist Mark Holmberg once named close to 20 that had at least a vague case for inclusion. So is Richmond really a “City of Seven Hills”?

The original “City of Seven Hills” is, of course, Rome, the center of European civilization in the classical period. Wikipedia lists 30 different cities in the Western Hemisphere that also claim to be built on seven hills, of which Richmond is neither the largest nor the most significant. Indeed, Polish scholar Gosciwit Malinowski has proposed a theory that cities founded in the medieval, renaissance, and colonial eras felt they needed seven hills to be seen as a legitimate capital city.

Richmond Virginia's Physical Location

When it comes to the physical location on which Richmond was founded, we probably shouldn’t even worry about hills. A much more important factor in Richmond’s original location is where it sits along the course of the James River. It lies along the Fall Line, a geographical feature that separates the rolling hills of Virginia’s Piedmont region from the low-lying Tidewater region. At the Fall Line, the James works through a series of rapids as its gradient grows steeper. At the eastern end of this seven-mile stretch, deep-bottom boats can still navigate the river. The need for a center of industry where cargo could be offloaded from boats and processed in factories or repacked for transport further inland was the primary need Richmond fulfilled in its early years.

How Richmond VA Got its Name

The hills of Richmond did inspire one thing: the city’s name. Richmond founder William Byrd II, a Virginia native, had attended school and practiced law in London before returning to Virginia as an adult. Byrd named the city after the town of Richmond in southwest London, which sits upon the Thames River. Byrd found the view of the James River from the top of Church Hill reminiscent of the view of the Thames from Richmond, London, and named Richmond, Virginia accordingly.

The Original Richmond VA City Grid

The river was an essential component of trade and industry in Richmond, but it was also occasionally a force for chaos and destruction. The original city grid planned out in 1737 by civil engineer William Mayo was mostly located in Shockoe Bottom, a low-lying neighborhood only a few feet above sea level. This made it prone to flooding, and a historic flood in 1771 saw the James River crest at 45 feet above normal, killing around 150 people and wreaking massive destruction on the young city of Richmond.

Floods in Richmond VA

Two hundred years later, the city was still prone to devastating floods, often caused by tropical weather systems. After three systems – Hurricane Camille, Hurricane Agnes, and Hurricane Juan – flooded Shockoe Bottom between 1969 and 1985, something had to be done. A floodwall project was greenlighted as part of the Water Resources Development Act, passed by Congress in 1986, which allowed the city to split the cost of floodwall development and construction with the Army Corps of Engineers. The floodwall was completed in 1995, and has protected the city from flooding in multiple instances since – though, sadly, it was powerless to stop the 2004 tributary flooding caused by Tropical Depression Gaston.

Regardless of all of these floods, the advantages its location along the James confer upon Richmond greatly outweigh the difficulties. Richmond sits at an important nexus of regional industry and trade, making it a city that has remained largely prosperous throughout the economic ups and downs of United States history. The river also offers many natural attractions for Richmonders. Belle Isle’s bucolic parklands are nicely complemented by exposed granite rocks alongside the river, perfect for sunbathing on summer afternoons. The urban rapids that run through the city are a great draw for fans of whitewater rafting. The many hiking trails that line the James, from the trails along the North Bank to the Pony Pasture trails south of the river, provide great opportunities to explore the natural world all around us, even within the heart of the city.

As a city of high historic importance, Richmond also offers opportunities to learn the history of the area by exploring its natural world. The Richmond Slave Trail is a 2.5-mile walk from the Manchester Docks to the former slave auction houses in Shockoe Bottom. It gives visitors a chance to experience what many of our American ancestors experienced when they were first brought to this continent, providing a firsthand understanding of this country’s original sin. South of the city, Henricus Historical Park gives visitors a view of what life was like for the original 17th century English colonists who settled in this area. And of course, the Richmond National Battlefield Park offers the opportunity to visit many different sites that played important roles in the Civil War, from Fort Harrison’s preserved earthworks to the battlefields of Cold Harbor.

Richmond’s rich geographical landscape has had a crucial impact on the city this onetime colonial settlement has grown into. From the hills to the hiking trails to the battlefields, all of it is fascinating to explore and learn from. And at the heart of it all, a river runs through it.