Historic Belle Isle

Belle Isle, a 54-acre island in the James River at Richmond, has long been one of the city’s most historic places. Virginia Indians fished in the river here long before the English arrived, Captain John Smith was among the first Europeans to visit in 1607, and William Byrd I acquired the island in 1676. William Byrd II, the founder of Richmond, called it “the broad rock island.” Sold by the Byrd family about 1776, the island soon became one of Richmond’s first industrial centers, with a nail factory here by 1814 and later a full-scale ironworks that operated until 1972. Granite was quarried here in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the Civil War, one of the most notorious prisoner-of-war camps in the South was located on Belle Isle, and the remains of a Confederate gun emplacement still are visible on the western end of the hill. From 1904 to 1967, the Virginia Electric Power Company operated a power plant on the island’s south bank. In 1995, Belle Isle was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a nationally significant historic site. Now one of Richmond’s most popular city parks, it has hiking and jogging trails, historic ruins, and broad rocks from which to view the river, especially the roaring rapids at its midpoint, and as part of the James River Park System it is both a natural area and a historic site.

Richmond, Virginia · United States