Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Broadway, VA

Broadway is a town in Rockingham County, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, and it is included in the Harrisonburg metropolitan area.

Broadway had a population of 4,170 in the 2020 census, and a Census Bureau survey estimate put its households at about 1,533 around 2020.

The town covers a total area of about 1.8 square miles, all of it land.

Broadway grew up where Linville Creek joins the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, around a mill built by Conrad Custer, and the early settlement was known as Custer's Mill.

Many of Broadway's early settlers were German immigrants of the Dunker faith, later known as the Church of the Brethren, who built the Linville Creek church in 1828.

Tradition says the town's name came from residents choosing 'the broad way' over the straight and narrow, after the first post office opened in 1854 under the name Broadway Depot.

Broadway was officially incorporated on March 9, 1880.

During the Civil War, Custer's Mill was burned during the Valley Campaigns and Broadway homes were used as makeshift hospitals; the town was home to John Kline, a Dunker pastor jailed for his pacifist beliefs who kept traveling through North and South during the war.

The coming of the railroad brought a boom to Broadway, which by the late 19th century had hotels, boarding houses, an opera house, and several newspapers.

Five Broadway-area sites — Bethlehem Church, the Lincoln Homestead and Cemetery, the Linville Creek Bridge, the Sites House, and the Tunker House — are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.