Get an ADT-Monitored Home Security System in Petersburg, Virginia

Petersburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 33,458. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines Petersburg (along taking into consideration the city of Colonial Heights) with Dinwiddie County for statistical purposes. The city is 21 miles (34 km) south of the commonwealth (state) capital city of Richmond.

It is located at the slip line (the head of navigation of rivers on the U.S. East Coast) of the Appomattox River (a tributary of the longer larger James River which flows east to meet the southern mouth of the Chesapeake Bay at the Hampton Roads harbor and the Atlantic Ocean). In 1645, the Virginia House of Burgesses ordered Fort Henry built, which attracted both traders and settlers to the area. The Town of Petersburg, chartered by the Virginia legislature in 1784, incorporated three at the forefront settlements, and in 1850 the legislature elevated it to city status.

Petersburg grew as a transportation hub and plus developed industry. It was the complete destination upon the Upper Appomattox Canal Navigation System, which opened in 1816, to a city mostly rebuilt after a devastating 1815 fire. When its Appomattox River harbor silted up, investors built an 8-mile railroad to City Point on the James River, which opened in 1838 (and was acquired by the city and renamed the Appomattox Railroad in 1847). As discussed below, that became one of four railroads built (some with direction subsidies) constructed (with divided terminals to the advantage of local freight haulers) before the American Civil War. In 1860, the city’s industries and transportation entire sum to make it the state’s second largest city (after Richmond). It combined commerce as far-off inland as Farmville, Virginia at the foothills of the Blue Ridge and the Appalachian Mountains chain, to shipping extra east into the Chesapeake Bay and North Atlantic Ocean.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), because of this railroad network, Petersburg became vital to Union plans to take over the Confederate States national capital received early in the engagement at Richmond. The 1864–65 Siege of Petersburg, which included the Battle of the Crater and nine months of trench conflict devastated the city. Battlefield sites are partly preserved as Petersburg National Battlefield by the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Petersburg rebuilt its railroads, including a connecting terminal by 1866, although it never quite regained its economic face because much shipping traffic would continue to the Norfolk seaport. After the consolidations of smaller railroads, both the CSX and Norfolk Southern railway networks facilitate Petersburg.