Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Port Republic, VA

Port Republic is a historic unincorporated village and census-designated place (CDP) in Rockingham County, in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

The village stands at the point where the North River and the South River converge to form the South Fork of the Shenandoah River, and its two long streets, Main and Water, run parallel to the South River.

The 2020 census counted 408 people in the Port Republic CDP, spread over about 2.2 square miles of land for a density of roughly 182 people per square mile.

The first European industry at Port Republic was a flour mill built by 1745, shortly after the first European settlers reached the area in the early 1700s.

Port Republic was officially established on January 14, 1802, by an act of the Virginia General Assembly, on land belonging to John McCarthrey, and was chartered that year on about twenty acres.

As the highest navigable point on the Shenandoah River, Port Republic became the port from which flour, iron, and other products of the upper Valley were shipped downstream, and flatboats called gundalows were built at the river confluence and floated down to Harpers Ferry.

By the 1830s Port Republic had grown into a small industrial and commercial center boasting several mills, a tannery, a foundry, and other enterprises.

The Battle of Port Republic, fought on June 9, 1862, was the final and climactic battle of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign, fought the day after the Battle of Cross Keys.

The 1862 battle turned on a 70-foot ridge known as 'The Coaling,' a former charcoaling site, where Gen. Richard Taylor's Louisiana brigade captured the Union artillery posted there.

Jackson made his headquarters at Madison Hall, the home of Dr. George Kemper, and narrowly escaped capture when Union cavalry dashed into the village on June 8, 1862; the body of Gen. Turner Ashby, killed near Harrisonburg on June 6, was brought to the village's Frank Kemper House.