Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Esmont, VA

Esmont is an unincorporated census-designated place in southern Albemarle County, Virginia, within the Charlottesville metropolitan area.

The village was built on land purchased from the former Esmont plantation estate of Dr. Charles Cocke, and the community was named for that estate.

The Esmont area has been populated since the eighteenth century, and the village grew up as a farming community with a predominantly African American population, though it did not get a post office until the later nineteenth century.

Esmont was first listed as a census-designated place in the 2010 census, with 528 residents; the 2020 census counted 491 people.

Slate quarrying began near Esmont in 1883, and by the mid-1920s the Esmont area had become the nation's largest soapstone producer, working some 6,000 acres.

The quarry operations around Esmont shut down in the 1960s because of environmental concerns.

At its peak, Esmont had a Chesapeake and Ohio Railway depot, three stores, and a bank; the former Esmont National Bank building survives today as the village post office.

St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Esmont, built of wood in 1914, is still in operation, and New Hope Baptist Church is a historically Black church in the village.

The village of Esmont itself, along with Guthrie Hall and Mountain Grove, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Esmont's history has been documented by an oral history project of the University of Virginia's Carter G. Woodson Institute, and Albemarle County around it counted 112,395 people in the 2020 census.