Biohazard Cleanup Near River Downs Midlothian, VA

Midlothian is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Chesterfield County, Virginia, a historic village turned Richmond suburb located west of Richmond and south of the James River.

The Census Bureau counted 18,320 residents in the Midlothian CDP in the 2020 census, living in about 7,745 households averaging about 2.45 people each in Census Bureau survey figures for 2020-2024.

Midlothian began more than 300 years ago as a coal town, founded by miners who settled around the coal pits west of Richmond in the early 18th century.

Midlothian is the site of the first commercially mined coal in the Colony of Virginia and in North America — coal was discovered near the French Huguenot settlement on the James River around 1701 and was in commercial production by the mid-1730s.

The village took its name from the Wooldridge brothers' Mid-Lothian Mining and Manufacturing Company, a name drawn from the Scottish shire of Midlothian.

Coal from Midlothian's Black Heath pits heated the White House during Thomas Jefferson's presidency, and during the American Revolution Midlothian coal supplied the cannon factory at Westham on the James River that made shot and shells for the Continental Army.

The Chesterfield Railroad, a 13-mile mule- and gravity-powered line, was built to haul Midlothian coal to wharves at Manchester across the river from Richmond, and in the early 1850s the Richmond and Danville Railroad built Coalfield Station near the mines.

Coal was so central to the area's identity that Chesterfield County's official seal depicts a coal miner leaning on his pick.

Mid-Lothian Mines Park, opened in 2004, is a 44-acre county preserve where the cut-stone ruins of some of America's first coal mines stand in woodland at one of the country's first major industrial sites.

Midlothian's other signature park, Robious Landing Park, covers 102 acres along the James River with 3.4 miles of trails and river access for kayaking, canoeing, rowing and fishing.