Hopewell, Virginia For other places with the same name, see Hopewell, Virginia .
Hopewell, Virginia The coastline of City Point, Virginia (present-day Hopewell) amid the winter of 1864-1865.
The coastline of City Point, Virginia (present-day Hopewell) amid the winter of 1864-1865.
Official seal of Hopewell, Virginia County None (Independent city) Hopewell is an autonomous town/city contiguous to Prince George County in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
As of the 2016 census, the populace was 22,735. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the town/city of Hopewell with Prince George County for statistical purposes.
1.1 City Point Main article: City Point, Virginia The town/city was established to take favor of its site overlooking the James and Appomattox Rivers.
City Point, the earliest part of Hopewell, was established in 1613 by Sir Thomas Dale.
It was first known as "Bermuda City," which was changed to Charles City, lengthened to Charles City Point, and later abbreviated to City Point.
"Charles City Point" was in Charles City Shire when the first eight shires were established in the Colony of Virginia in 1634.
Charles City Shire soon became known as Charles City County in 1637.
In 1619 Samuel Sharpe and Samuel Jordan from City Point, then titled Charles City, were burgesses at the first meeting of the House of Burgesses.
The burgesses separated an region of the county south of the river, including City Point, establishing it separately as Prince George County in 1703.
City Point was an unincorporated town in Prince George County until the City of Hopewell took in the Town of City Point in 1923.
Grant used City Point as his command posts during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864 and 1865.
His property encompassed most of the present day town/city of Hopewell and Eppes Island, a plantation athwart the James River from City Point.
The City Point Railroad, assembled in 1838 between City Point and Petersburg, was used as a critical part of the siege strategy.
Hopewell, part of the Eppes' plantation, was advanced by Du - Pont Company in 1914 as Hopewell Farm, an incorporated region in Prince George County.
Nearly burned to the ground in the Hopewell Fire of 1915, the town/city prospered afterward and became known as the "Wonder City".
Unlike most metros/cities in Virginia, Hopewell was never incorporated as a town, but it was incorporated as an autonomous town/city in 1916.
After Du - Pont abandoned the town/city following World War I, moving its manufacturing facilities elsewhere and specializing in other products, Hopewell briefly became a ghost town until 1923 when Tubize Corporation established a plant on the old Du - Pont site.
The same year, the town/city of Hopewell took in the neighboring town of City Point, which enabled it to grew and thrive.
As early as its incorporation, Hopewell was a town/city of industrious immigrants.
As was the case in most southern cities, African Americans in Hopewell were subject to Jim Crow segregation until the success of the Civil Rights Movement.
The picturesque theater in the middle of town, the Beacon Theater, only allowed Blacks in the balcony. In August 1966, the Ku Klux Klan confronted the Reverend Curtis Harris and other Black Hopewell people when they attempted to petition the town/city manager to find an alternate locale for a landfill that was going to be opened in the middle of a Black neighborhood. Hopewell enhance schools were desegregated under court order in 1963, following Renee Patrice GILLIAM et al v.
School Board of the City of Hopewell, Virginia. Hopewell made nationwide news when, on December 22, 1935, a bus plunged through the open draw of the Appomattox River Drawbridge on State Route 10 just outside Hopewell's town/city limits.
Like many cities, Hopewell embarked on an urban renewal plan in the 1960s in an attempt to revitalize its downtown retail area.
The plan was a failure because many of the retail businesses that had been positioned downtown moved elsewhere to new shopping centers being advanced outside the town/city limits in Petersburg, Chester, and Prince George County.
Further, the City invested $12 million into a new beautiful state of the art flagship library for the busy Appomattox Regional Library System, the Maude Langhorne Nelson Library.
The Library has a cyber cafe, extensive YA and children's collections, and a replica of the historic, 1600s-era frigate ship, Hopewell, installed as a centerpiece. The City also restored the Beacon Theater, which was assembled in 1928, and there are 70 or more concerts and other affairs annually.
The City was called for many years the Wonder City because of its resilience, and the Wonder City is on the Rise again.
Hopewell is the locale of a several large chemical plants owned by the Honeywell Corporation, Ashland, Evonik Industries, as well as a paper foundry owned by West - Rock.
Such industries have required the town/city and inhabitants to deal with many surroundingal issues over the years, especially as they learned more about the effects of the industries.
The Federal Correctional Complex, Petersburg (FCC Petersburg), two federal prisons which home 3400inmates, are positioned just outside the Hopewell town/city limits, in Prince George County In 1977, Hopewell again made the nationwide news due to another accident involving a drawbridge when the tanker S.S.
In 1983, Hopewell again received negative publicity from the nationwide news media when it was identified that Evelyn Rust Wells, an elderly woman, had been held captive and terrorized in her home in the City Point section.
Although still an meaningful industrial city, Hopewell has struggled with transitions through loss of jobs due to plant closures, shifts in residentiary housing patterns, and the costs of surroundingal clean-up.
Hopewell has encouraged re-development along its coastline areas along the James and Appomattox Rivers, in the downtown area, and the City Point Historic District, as well as the sites of a several long vacant industrialized plants.
The town/city also has various Aladdin Kit Homes; at one time, it may have had the most such homes in the nation.
The former Hopewell High School, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was renovated from 2009-2010 and now serves as an apartment building.
Although the facility was sitting idle through 2013 with the town/city of Hopewell taking legal action to recoup unpaid taxes on the property, the facility was eventually purchased by another firm and operations were restarted in 2014. In 2015 the troubled ethanol plant closed again for a second time after less than a year in operation with its owners citing a lack of profitability as the reason for the shutdown.
Hopewell has come to the consideration of AAA because some of its members have complained that Hopewell is a speed trap for its practice of citing drivers for speeding along a 1.7 mile stretch of Interstate 295, nicknamed the "Million Dollar Mile" by disgruntled drivers.
AAA, claimed in a press release that Hopewell employs 11 sheriff's deputies working in 14-hour shifts to patrol less than two miles of the highway that lie inside the town/city limits of Hopewell.
However, this statistic has been denied by the sheriff of Hopewell, who was baffled as to where that knowledge was generated as he said the deputies working on I-295 only work eight-hour shifts. This practice, which it has been claimed, annually generated $1.8 million in revenue from speeding tickets, of which 75% were issued to out of state drivers, triggered a court clash between the Commonwealth's Attorney and the town/city prosecutor, and elicited an official ruling from the Attorney General of Virginia. Sheriff Luther Sodat said that the nearly two-mile stretch of highway "is a safety copy for Hopewell." Virginia's urban interstates have a fatality rate about one-third the Statewide rate for all roads combined. According to the United States Enumeration Bureau, the town/city has a total region of 10.8 square miles (28.0 km2), of which 10.2 square miles (26.4 km2) are territory and 0.5 square miles (1.3 km2) (4.9%) is water. City Point took in in 1923 City Point National Cemetery Charles City County, Virginia - northeast The following are schools in the Hopewell, Virginia school division.
Hopewell City Schools persistently project near the bottom of the state in Standards of Learning (SOL) scores, graduation rates, and pupil discipline.
Appomattox Regional Library serves as the library fitness for Hopewell, Virginia.
Samuel Face, American inventor, was born in City Point.
Peter Francisco, soldier in the American Revolutionary War, found abandoned on the harbors at City Point The Hopewell News, locally managed and directed by HPC Media, is an 8,000 circulation twice-weekly journal that covers small-town news, sports and affairs of interest to the communities of Hopewell, Enon and Prince George.
For over 80 years, the Hopewell News has served the greater Hopewell and Prince George communities.
National Register of Historic Places listings in Hopewell, Virginia Making the American Dream Work : A Cultural History of African Americans in Hopewell, Virginia, Lauranett L.
Official Website of the City of Hopewell https://hopewellva.gov/library/ "Hopewell, Virginia Koppen Climate Classification (Weatherbase)".
City of Hopewell Chesterfield County Charles City County Prince George County Prince George County Hopewell, Virginia
Categories:
Cities in Virginia - Hopewell, Virginia - Populated places on the James River (Virginia)Greater Richmond Region
|