Two rivers, one boardwalk, and 400 years of American history hiding in plain sight in Virgini

It’s 20 miles south of Richmond

Two rivers come together just south of Richmond, and right at that junction sits a small city most people drive past without a second look.

Hopewell, Virginia, has about 23,000 residents, a riverfront boardwalk, Civil War sites run by the National Park Service, and thousands of acres of wildlife refuge. English colonists first settled here in 1613.

That makes it one of the oldest continuously inhabited English settlements in the country. The history runs deep, but the rivers and trails keep you coming back for the outdoor side of things.

A ship called Hopewell gave this place its name

Captain Francis Eppes patented 1,700 acres at City Point in 1635 and named part of the land Hopewell Farm after the ship that carried him to Virginia.

For more than two centuries, City Point stayed a quiet riverside village. Then the Civil War changed everything.

Union General Ulysses S. Grant set up his headquarters here from June 1864 to April 1865, and the tiny village became one of the busiest ports in the world, supplying more than 100,000 troops and 65,000 animals.

President Abraham Lincoln came twice to meet with Grant.

After the war, things went quiet again until the early 1900s, when DuPont built a massive guncotton factory and the population jumped from a few hundred to tens of thousands almost overnight.

Grant ran the final months of the war from this bluff

Appomattox Manor sits on a bluff right where the two rivers come together.

The Eppes family built it around 1763 and held onto it until 1979, when they gave it to the National Park Service.

Grant lived first in a tent, then in a small log cabin on the grounds while he directed the last stretch of the war. The Park Service rebuilt that cabin on its original spot and runs a museum inside the manor.

You can watch a short film about the war, walk the grounds where Lincoln and Grant met, and it costs you nothing. The whole site falls under Petersburg National Battlefield.

Walk 24 stops through a Civil War neighborhood

The City Point neighborhood still holds dozens of historic buildings from the late 1700s through the early 1900s. You can follow a self-guided walking tour that hits 24 points of interest tied to the Civil War.

The Virginia Department of Historic Resources put the route together.

Along the way, you pass homes in colonial-era style, Dutch Colonial Revival churches, and notable structures like the Porter House, Temple House and Bonaccord House.

The architecture shifts block by block, and you cover a couple centuries on foot.

Step inside a 1789 plantation on the Appomattox

Weston Manor went up in 1789 on the banks of the Appomattox River, built by William and Christian Eppes Gilliam. It stands as one of the last surviving 18th-century plantation homes on the river.

The house follows classic Virginia Georgian architecture, and much of the original interior woodwork is still intact. During the Civil War, Union General Philip Sheridan used it as his headquarters.

The Historic Hopewell Foundation runs guided tours through all three floors and a reconstructed kitchen building. Both the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register include it.

A Navy chapel holds Hopewell’s oldest stories

The City Point Early History Museum sits inside St. Denis Chapel, which the U.S. Navy built in 1887 as a place of worship for military personnel.

Inside, you walk through exhibits on the area’s colonial roots, the Civil War years, and early 20th-century life.

One display tells the story of formerly enslaved people who sought freedom behind Union lines at City Point during the war.

Another shows pieces from the Hopewell China Corporation, a pottery factory that operated in the city from 1920 to 1945.

Eagles and herons along a 1,736-foot boardwalk

The Hopewell Riverwalk runs 1,736 feet along the Appomattox River shoreline.

It opened in 2019 and connects to City Park, where you also find a playground, a fishing pier and a covered pavilion.

The boardwalk has railings on both sides, benches for resting and paved access from the parking area, so it works for everyone. Keep your eyes on the water and the trees.

Bald eagles, osprey, great blue herons and turtles show up regularly.

The Riverwalk is one piece of a planned 25-mile Appomattox River Trail that the Friends of the Lower Appomattox River are developing.

Paddle the Appomattox from a 65-acre riverside park

Appomattox River Regional Park covers more than 65 acres of woods along the river and gives you over three miles of hiking trails, a fitness trail and picnic pavilions.

A canoe and kayak launch puts you right on the water, and the Appomattox is a designated Virginia State Scenic River, so the paddling is calm and worth the effort.

If you’d rather stay on land, an observation pier and fishing pier give you quiet spots for birdwatching or dropping a line.

4,800 acres of eagle country along the James River

The James River National Wildlife Refuge stretches across 4,800 acres of forests, wetlands and marshes on the south bank of the lower James River.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages it, and the whole reason it exists is to protect bald eagle habitat.

You can hike the Powell Creek Nature Trail, which runs about 1.5 miles through hardwood forest, across an earthen dike and onto a small island surrounded by freshwater marsh.

Observation platforms, interpretive signs and a canoe and kayak launch line the route. The trail stays open from sunrise to sunset, year-round, and it costs nothing.

Fish from a pier where two rivers collide

Old City Point Waterfront Park sits at the very tip of City Point, right where the Appomattox meets the James. A fishing pier juts out into the channel, and if you don’t have a boat, this is your spot.

Picnic areas and restrooms are close by. The rocky shoreline and the wide river view make it a good place to sit and watch the water move.

Just nearby, City Point National Cemetery holds the graves of Union soldiers who died during the Siege of Petersburg.

Catch live music in a 1928 Art Deco theater

The Beacon Theatre opened in 1928 in downtown Hopewell, designed in a mix of Colonial Revival and Art Deco styles. The three-story building started life as a vaudeville and movie theater with seating for close to 1,000.

It closed in 1981 and fell apart before the city took on a major restoration. In 2014, the doors opened again, this time as a performing arts venue.

The theater now hosts live music, concerts and community events throughout the year, and it sits on the National Register of Historic Places.

Drive Routes 5 and 10 through plantation country

The 5 and Dime is a scenic driving route along Routes 5 and 10 that winds through Hopewell, Prince George County, Charles City County and beyond.

You pass historic plantations, riverside parks and small-town downtowns along the way.

Route 5 runs alongside the Virginia Capital Trail, a paved path for biking and walking that connects Richmond to Williamsburg. The Jamestown-Scotland Ferry crosses the James River along this route, too.

You can knock the whole drive out in a day, or spread it across a weekend to dig into Virginia’s Tidewater region.

Explore Hopewell’s History in Virginia

If you want to see all of this for yourself, start at the Hopewell/Prince George Visitor Center at 4100 Oaklawn Blvd. in Hopewell, Va. The center is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is free.

From there, the City Point historic district, Riverwalk, waterfront parks and downtown are all within a few minutes of each other.

Nearby, you can also visit Petersburg National Battlefield and the plantations along Route 5.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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