Midlothian is an unincorporated community in Chesterfield County, Virginia, United States.
Founded over 300 years ago as a coal mining village, it is now an outlying suburban community located
well beyond the city limits in the Southside area of Richmond in the Richmond-Petersburg region.
It was named for the early 18th century coal mining enterprises of the Wooldridge brothers who came from
the mining villages of East Lothian and West Lothian near Edinburgh, Scotland.
In a compromise, the new venture was called Mid-Lothian.
It produced the first commercially mined coal in the Virginia Colony and in what became the United States.
By 1700, several mines were in development by French Huguenots and others.
Shipment of coal began in the 1730s. Midlothian-area coal heated the U.S. White House for
President Thomas Jefferson.
Related transportation needs and innovations resulted in construction of an early toll road, the Manchester Turnpike
in 1807 and the Chesterfield Railroad, the state's first in 1831, each to travel the 13 miles to the port of Manchester,
just below the fall line of the James River.
(Manchester, the original county seat of Chesterfield County, became an independent city and merged with
Richmond in 1910).
Near the mines, Coalfield Station was built in the early 1850s on the Richmond and Danville Railroad.
The small village of shops, churches, and schools established nearby came to be called Midlothian.
In the 1920s, Midlothian's commercial village area along the Old Buckingham Road was sited on the new
east-west U.S. Route 60.
A few decades later, communities grew up near Midlothian, including the large Salisbury community,
named for the colonial-era home of Thomas Mann Randolph and later Virginia Governor Patrick Henry (1784-1786),
and the massive Brandermill planned development sited on Swift Creek Reservoir.
In the 21st century, widespread Midlothian extends many miles beyond the former village area.
It is located along the semi-circumferential limited access State Route 288 which links Interstate 64 with the
State Route 76 toll road and Interstate 95 in the Richmond area's southwestern quadrant.
Midlothian was ranked #37 in CNNMoney's list of "The Best Places to Live" in 2005.
Recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau as a census-designated place (CDP), the community had a total
population of 35,427 as of the 2000 census.
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