The way we were

 

 

During the April 1 meeting of the Goochland Board of Supervisors, Robin Lind, president of the Goochland Historical Society https://www.goochlandhistory.org/ and Goochland Geographical Information Systems Director Jon Worley introduced a new addition to the county website, a historic map viewer that provides a glimpse into Goochland’s past. 

Lind said that, for the past five years, he and Worley have been collaborating to add a historical map viewer to the GIS system. “The impetus for making this public is the exhibit now at the Library of Virginia, https://www.lva.virginia.gov/,  called “mapping the Commonwealth 1816 to 1826”, said Lind.

This new tool overlays current conditions with a choice of historic maps, from 1820, 1863, 1880, 1916, and 1932, when county roads were taken over by VDOT, and the most recent from 1961. Many roads in the county have changed, disappeared, or moved over the years.

In 1816, Lind explained, Virginia Governor William Cary Nicholas retained surveyor John Wood to survey the entire state, which then had 146 counties, as West Virginia had not yet separated. The final product, completed by Herman Boyer in 1824—Wood died in 1822—was almost 44 square feet in size.  The room in which the final map was displayed required a 14-foot ceiling to accommodate its size.

Faint handwriting on the eastern edge of Goochland on this map indicates the presence of granite, which Luck Stone, headquartered in Goochland, has quarried more than 500 tons of granite in the past century, said Lind.

The 1863 Gilmer map, created by John Gilmer, a member of the Confederate States Corps of Engineers, is highly detailed showing roads, mills, taverns, and churches. The map viewer lets you zoom into the image for a closer look.

The 1880 map, created by topographical engineer John George, a member of the family who gave their name to Georges Tavern, shows geological formations of coal in the east, gold in the west, and iron and plumbago—also known as graphite—in the middle. It also indicates landowners, some of those names are still familiar. Faint red lines, said Lind, show roads that were abandoned over time or moved. The George map estimated the county’s size as 320 square miles, a little larger than today’s 290, and indicated that it marked 160 square miles of cleared land, 80 square miles of original forest and a similar amount of secondary growth. The map also reports a school population of 3,581 students in 35 schools, 24 churches, and 19 mills.

On VDOT’s 1932, the road we now know at Rt. 250, was labeled 41. Since then, VDOT adopted a numbering protocol that used even numbers for east-west routes and odd numbers for north-south roads.

Lind expects that the historical map viewer will be an important tool for residents, planners, and historians studying Goochland County’s development as it grows.

The tool is available on the county website https://www.goochlandva.us/ for your viewing pleasure.