Ashland, Virginia

In 1837, the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad laid its iron-capped wooden rails from Richmond to Aquia Creek. There, passengers could meet a stagecoach that would transport them to the railroad-owned steamship line and cruise up the Potomac to Washington. In between their outset and destination was a boggy, overgrown area known as the Slashes, which seemed the perfect rest stop for weary travelers during the 1850s. The region was renamed Ashland, after native son Henry Clay s home in Kentucky. By 1867, the Civil War had brought economic collapse and a resultant depression, and as a town that had relied on revenue from gambling, horseracing, and other leisure activities, Ashland faced serious challenges to its very existence. Randolph-Macon College, originally in Mecklenburg County, made a deal with Ashland that would save both the town and the nation s oldest Methodist college by reestablishing its campus along their railroad tracks."

Author: Dale Paige Talley
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing (SC)
Published: 04/01/2005
Pages: 128
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.68lbs
Size: 9.26h x 6.68w x 0.36d
ISBN: 9780738517704

About the Author
Talley, Dale Paige: - Through vintage photographs, diaries, and articles from the pages of the Herald-Progress, the venerable weekly published continuously for more than 100 years, Images of America: Ashland captures the days gone by. Author Dale Paige Talley, an amateur historian with a deep affection for Ashland, has compiled more than 200 photographs and illustrations that depict the life of this railroad town.