Bike 76 VA: The Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast

A historical marker for C. E. Abrams school, which provided high school education to African American pupils during the era of segregation, is located on the grounds of Fluvanna Middle School in central Virginia, along route 76 between Richmond and Charlottesville. In recent years, the history of African American education in the twentieth century has been remembered with museum exhibits and historical markers, including the sign for C. E. Abrams school visible from the main road. This episode explores this history of race and education with particular attention to sites along Route 76 across Virginia where memories of schooling and the implications of segregation are being preserved for the public. The episode is connected to Fluvanna County, located just under 200 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and just about 350 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia.

Like many churches along rural roads, Mt. Gilead Baptist Church on Shannon Hill Road is located at a crossroads, but is apparently far from any other community center or local services. Despite this apparent isolation, Mt. Gilead Baptist Church has a history that extends back almost two hundred years, to a moment when Protestant religious enthusiasm transformed the relationship between Virginians and their faith. This moment, the Second Great Awakening, was connected to broader themes related to religious tolerance, political movement, the reformation of slavery, and the role of women in American society. An exploration of the history of religion in eighteenth and early nineteenth century Virginia connects this church to broader themes encountered by cyclists riding along route 76 as they pass by churches and perhaps wonder about past, present, and future of these buildings and their congregations. This episode is connected to the community of Shannon Hill, located just over 150 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and nearly 400 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia.

The town of Mineral, located along Route 76 north of Richmond, received its name to demonstrate the importance of mining to the community. The region surrounding Mineral City was a center of gold mining in Virginia for decades. Elsewhere in the state, mining operations extracted iron ore, etc and especially coal to drive industrial production in Virginia, nationally, and even globally. Yet an economy based on resource extraction is always vulnerable to multiple factors, including the depletion of precious materials, changes in market conditions, and especially long-term damage to workers and community members. By the 1930s, Mineral had experienced a trajectory of boom and bust characteristic of many communities dependent on resource extraction. An exploration of these trajectories in communities across Virginia identifies both the local effects and broader implications of this pattern of industrial and post-industrial economic development. This episode is connected to the town of Mineral, located about 140 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 300 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia.

Farms are a common sight for cyclists riding Route 76 across Virginia. Virginia’s farm history extends back more than five hundred years, as crops and livestock were central to Native American household and community practices well before the arrival of Europeans. An exploration of Virginia agriculture along Route 76 illustrates changes in production, distribution, and dissemination, as well as remarkable continuities with the time fifty years ago when Bikecentennial rides rode past many of these same farming communities. This episode is connected to the region near Lake Anna, located just under 130 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 420 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia.

Church congregations, just like church buildings, have a history. The people who attend a church may be connected by shared location, family allegiance, or generational connections as much as they are by commitment to a particular denomination, theology, or doctrine. History can also divide communities. These divisions may result from theological disputes, organizational changes, or personal disagreements. In Virginia, and in the United States more generally, divisions in churches may also reflect divisions between the races. Two churches in central Virginia along route 76 illustrate how deeply race has shaped religion in the past as well as the present. Ebenezer Baptist Church and Mount Olivet Baptist Church are located just one mile apart on Coatesville Road. This division between two Baptist churches has its origins more than one hundred and fifty years ago, following the Civil War, and has remained in place ever since. The origins and legacies of this split reveal a great deal about religion in Virginia history and in the present. This episode is connected to the location where the route crosses Needstan Creek, located just over 110 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and nearly 44 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia.

Railways are a familiar sight for cyclists on Route 76, because the expansion of the railroad network for the last two centuries has been an important element of the history of Virginia and the United States more generally. Ashland, where Route 76 literally runs on either side of a train track, thus serves as an illustrative example of how the growth, consolidation, decline, and now renewal of railway transportation have shaped the long term trajectory of communities, the state, and the nation. This episode is connected to the town of Ashland, located just under 100 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and just about 450 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia.

As it circles to the east of Virginia’s capital city, the Transamerican Bicycle Route 76 passes by several locations of Richmond Battlefield Park. These facilities commemorate a Civil War battle that took place over ten days in early summer 1864. Visitors to this historical site will be able to view explanatory signs and walk along the ground where men from both sides fought and died. This experience provides insights into continuing debates over the implications of the Civil War for Virginia in the past, in the present, and into the future. This episode is connected to the capital city of Richmond, located just under 80 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 470 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia.

As Route 76 travels along the James River between Williamsburg and Richmond, cyclists should be aware that they are passing through a region that had some of the oldest and largest plantations in Virginia during two centuries of enslavement. Yet just fifty miles south of where Route 76 passes through these well preserved legacies of plantation slavery, in Southampton county near the North Carolina border, inconspicuous historical markers commemorate a very different moment in the history of Virginia: the uprising of enslaved people led by Nat Turner in 1831. Recognizing the history of brutal oppression inherent in the plantation system provides important perspectives on the forces that shaped, and continue to shape, the history of this region of Virginia. This episode is connected to the region of Kimages, about 60 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and nearly 500 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia.

For nearly fifty miles, the most eastern section of Route 76 runs parallel to the James River. Sturgeon Point is located on the northern bank of the river, just a mile south of Route 76, as indicated by a historical marker visible on the west bound route. This episode explores the history of the James River as a way to enable cyclists to make connections between the observed landscape and the long history which has shaped the current environment. Sturgeon Point on the James River is located just under 40 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and more than 500 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia

Jamestown, located along Route 76 in coastal Virginia, represents two alternative origin stories for the United States. First, the establishment of the Jamestown colony in 1607 would lead to the creation of the first representative legislative government in the new world, thus beginning the steps toward democratic self-government that would eventually lead to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Second, just about thirty miles from Jamestown, at Point Comfort, the first African slaves were brought to the English colony in 1619, thus beginning the process that would lead to forced enslavement of millions, a national economy built on plantation slavery, the American Civil War, and subsequent decades of Jim Crow segregation. This episode explores these two points of origin, close to each other both geographically and chronologically, as a way to consider the parallel development of representative government and forced enslavement in American history.This episode is connected to Jamestown, about 20 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and 530 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia.