User:Shrkym/Midlothian, Virginia

Demographics
As of 2020, the district of Midlothian had a total population of 72,711 consisting of 26,206 households. The majority population is non-Hispanic or Latino white with a population of 49,544. The next largest population is Black or African Americans, followed by people of Hispanic or Latino and Asian descent. The median household income for 2019 was $89,851.

Economy
Midlothian was ranked #37 in CNNMoney's list of "The Best Places to Live" in 2005 and #99 in 2008.

At the turn of the 21st century, a group of area business professionals formed an independent organization called the Western Chesterfield Business Alliance, which in 2013 was renamed the Midlothian Business Alliance.

Government
Midlothian is an unincorporated area of Chesterfield County. The area is represented by an elected district supervisor on the county's board of supervisors. The position has been held by Republican Leslie Haley since 2015.

Early History
Before the arrival of Europeans in the 17th century, the area had been populated for thousands of years by various cultures of Native Americans. Among these in historic times were the Siouan-speaking Monacan tribe. They often came into conflict with the Algonquian-speaking members of the Powhatan Confederacy, who were generally located to the east in the Virginia Tidewater area.

In 1700 and after, French Huguenot settlers, who were Protestant, came to the area in the Virginia Colony to escape Catholic religious persecution in France. Most came from London, where they had resettled as refugees. Although the Crown had offered the French land in Lower Norfolk County, the governor of the colony and William Byrd offered them the village of Manakin Town, which had been abandoned by the Monacan. Byrd and the governor intended to use the French as a buffer settlement, and thought they would be easier to control apart from the English. The location was about 20 miles (32 km) above the head of navigation on the James River at what became Richmond. The French, many of whom were artisans and merchants, struggled to survive on the isolated frontier. The terrain was hilly and largely wooded, and shipping of farm products such as tobacco crops was not easy.

The greater natural resource in the Midlothian area was coal, and the area was ultimately developed with coal mining and railroads. About 10 miles (16 km) west of the fall line of the James River at present-day Richmond is a basin of coal, which was one of the earliest mined in the Virginia Colony. Scots settlers with mining skills began to mine this resource in the 18th century. Many coal-related enterprises in the Midlothian area of Chesterfield County began early in the 18th century.

In 1846, Chesterfield County's first Black church, First Baptist Church of Midlothian, was founded. It was rebuilt in 1877 after a fire, and the reconstruction included a small one-room building to be the first public school for Black children in the area.

Early roads, first turnpike, and railroads
In 1802, a petition to form the Manchester Turnpike Company was created by mine owners and investors. They wanted the construction of a macadam toll road at least 30 feet wide from Manchester to Falling Creek bridge. The toll road, Manchester and Falling Creek Turnpike, was built in 1804 to ease traffic on what is now Old Buckingham Road. Farm and passenger wagons were allowed to only pay the toll one-way, however coal wagons were to pay half toll on return due to the wear the heavy wagons would create on the road. It was graveled in 1807, making it Virginia's first hard-surfaced road. That road's descendant is known today as Midlothian Turnpike.

By 1824, an estimated 70 to 100 wagons, each of which was loaded with four or five tons of coal, made a daily trip on the turnpike, transporting to the docks near Manchester the million or more bushels (30,000 metric tons) of coal that were produced in Chesterfield County each year. The heavily loaded coal wagons tended to cut deep ruts in the turnpike, raising clouds of dust in summer and churning the road into mud in the rainy season. As there were few options for shunpiking, citizens whose faster buggies dawdled along behind the lumbering wagons urged the state legislature to do something about it—a canal, a better road, but something.

The result was the Chesterfield Railroad, a 13 mile (21 km) mule- and gravity-powered line that connected the Midlothian coal mines with wharves located at Manchester, directly across from Richmond. Partially funded by the Virginia Board of Public Works, the railroad began operating in 1831, the first in the state. By 1852, the newer, steam-driven Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D) began operation to Coalfield Station, later renamed Midlothian; it quickly supplanted the slower Chesterfield Railroad. In a financial reorganization in 1894, the R&D line through Midlothian became part of the Southern Railway system. It is now part of Norfolk Southern Railway.

20th century: village becomes surrounded by suburban development[edit]
In the 20th century, coal mining declined. Only 130 tons of coal were produced a day by the year 1939. Gradually, post-war construction of the highway network and the growth of metropolitan Richmond brought subdivision residential development. When the Swift Creek Reservoir was created in 1965, the availability of water and sewer service accelerated residential growth, with Brandermill built in 1975.

In 1988, an extension of the Powhite Parkway and widening of Midlothian Turnpike and Hull Street Road (U.S. Route 360) provided much-needed highway infrastructure. The area continued to attract new residents as farm and forest lands were redeveloped into residential subdivisions. The expansion of the area assigned to the Midlothian post office caused a much larger area to be assigned to have a "Midlothian" ZIP code on their address. As a result, many address locations within Chesterfield County that are far away from the original Midlothian village have "Midlothian" as their preferred place name. Chesterfield County's Midlothian Community Special Area Plan defines the Midlothian community as roughly the area between the Village of Midlothian and Lucks Lane to the south.