Potterfield Bridge

The Potterfield Bridge honors the crowning achievement of the 22-year career of T. Tyler Potterfield as a city planner, historian, author, mentor, and citizen of Richmond. It was the first major project completed as part of the City of Richmond’s 2012 Riverfront Plan to create a long-term vision for the Richmond Riverfront as the heart of the Richmond Region. Completed in 2016 by the City of Richmond, the bridge stretches over 1,700 feet, or about 1/3 of a mile, over the rapids of the Great Falls of the James, linking the north bank at Brown’s Island to the south bank of the James River at the Manchester Wall and Floodwall Trail. Paths and landscaping around the Manchester Wall and the Richmond-Petersburg Railroad abutment extend for another 1/3 of a mile of universally accessible paths and connect to the Manchester neighborhood. On the Brown’s Island side, the bridge begins with the April 1865 exhibit, which memorializes over three days in April 1865 the Confederate Evacuation and Fire, the Entrance of the Union Army, and Emancipation Day in Richmond. A new bridge structure with reinforcing steel was built on top of the concrete piers of a dam dating to 1901. Brown’s Island, named for its original owner Elijah Brown, is a City of Richmond park operated by Venture Richmond and was transferred to the City by the Ethyl Corporation in 1971 for use as a public riverfront. It is one terminus of the Canal Walk, a public pedestrian path following the Haxall and James River and Kanawha Canals for 1.25 miles, a 52 million dollar project completed by the City of Richmond in 1999. The Richmond Slave Trail intersects with the Canal Walk at 14th Street. Nearby, the C&O Railway Viaduct, begun in the 1890s and completed in 1901, still carries freight trains and stretches nearly 3 miles along the north bank of the James River from Great Shiplock Park to the Oregon Hill Overlook.

Richmond, Virginia · United States