Danville Register And Bee Virginia
Danville Register And Bee Virginia
Danville is an independent city in Virginia, United States, bounded by Pittsylvania County, Virginia and Caswell County, North Carolina. It was the last capital of the Confederate States of America. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Danville with Pittsylvania county for statistical purposes under the Danville, Virginia Metropolitan Statistical Area. Danville is also called the city of churches because it has more churches per square mile than any other city in the state of Virginia. The population was 48,411 at the 2000 census. It hosts the Danville Braves baseball club of the Appalachian League. Dan River Industries, formerly one of the world's largest textile mills, recently closed leaving a large number of Danvillians without jobs.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 43.9 square miles (114 km 2 ), of which 43.1 square miles (112 km 2 ) is land and 0.9 square miles (2.3 km 2 ) is water.
Demographics
As of 2007, Danville had a population of 44,947 which was a -6.5% drop from the previous year. Races in Danville were White Non-Hispanic 53.3%, African American 44.1%, Hispanic 1.3%, two or more races 0.8%.
25.4% of the population Never Married, 46.6% are married, 5.4% is separated. 11.6% are widowed, 11.0% are divorced. There were 59 registered sex offenders living in Danville in early 2007.
Crime
Overall crime in Danville is slightly above the national average. The Total Crime Index for Danville is 338.3 per 100,000 residents, the National Average is 320.9 per 100,000 residents.
Transportation
Railroad
Amtrak's Crescent train connects Danville with the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Charlotte, Atlanta, Birmingham and New Orleans. The Amtrak station is situated at 677 Craghead Street.
Highway
U.S. Route 58 Business (Riverside Dr/River St) parallels the north bank of the Dan River traveling east/west through Danville's main commercial district while the US 58 Bypass route bypasses the city's center to the south via the Danville Expressway. U.S. Route 29 splits into a business route and a bypass at the North Carolina/Virginia border. The business route enters the heart of Danville via West Main Street and Memorial Drive and exits via Central Boulevard and Piney Forest Road; US 29 Business travels relatively north/south. The bypass (future Interstate 785) takes the eastern segment of the Danville Expressway and rejoins the business route north of the city near Chatham, Virginia.
North Carolina Highway 86 becomes State Route 86 once it crosses the state line into Danville as South Main Street. It continues north to its terminus at US 29 Business/Central Boulevard.
State Route 293 was created in 1998 to mark the route of old US 29 Business, which was rerouted to the west. SR 293 enters Danville's downtown historic district as West Main Street, then Main Street, and then crosses the Dan River to meet US 29 Business as North Main Street.
State Route 51 parallels US 58 Business as Westover Drive from its western terminus at US 58 Business at the Danville's corporate limits to its eastern terminus at US 58 Business near the Dan River.
History
In 1728, William Byrd headed an expedition sent to determine the true boundary between Virginia and North Carolina. One night late that summer, the party camped upstream from what is now Danville, Byrd was so taken with the beauty of the land, that he prophesied a future settlement in the vicinity, where people would live “with much comfort and gaiety of Heart.” The river along which he camped was named the “Dan”, for Byrd, supposing himself to be in the land of plenty, felt he had wandered “from Dan to Beersheba”.
The first white settlement (numerous Indian tribes had lived in the area) occurred downstream from Byrd’s campsite in 1792, at a spot along the river shallow enough to allow fording. It was named “Wynne’s Falls,” after the first settler. The village has a “social” reason for its origin, since it was here that pioneering Revolutionary War veterans met once a year to fish and talk over old times.
The establishment by the General Assembly of a tobacco warehouse at Wynne’s Falls in 1793 was the beginning of “The World’s Best Tobacco Market.” Virginia’s largest market for bright leaf tobacco. The village was renamed Danville by act of the Virginia Legislature on November 23, 1793. A charter for the town was drawn up February 17, 1830, but by the time of its issue, the population had exceeded the pre-arranged boundaries. This necessitated a new charter, which was issued in 1833. In that year, James Lanier was elected the first mayor, assisted by a council of “twelve fit and able men.”
American Civil War
The outbreak of the American Civil War found Danville a thriving community of some 5,000 people. During those four years of war, the town was transformed into a strategic center of activity. It was a quartermaster’s depot, rail center, hospital station for Confederate wounded and a prison camp. Here six tobacco warehouses were converted into prisons, housing at one time more than 5,000 captured Federal soldiers.
Starvation and dysentery, plus a smallpox epidemic in 1864, caused the death of 1,314 of these prisoners. Their remains now lie interred in the Danville National Cemetery.
The Richmond and Danville Rail Road was the main supply route into Petersburg where Lee's Army of Northern Virginia were holding their defensive line to protect Richmond. The Danville supply train ran until General Stoneman's Union cavalry troops tore up the tracks. This event was immortalised in the song "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Danville became the last capital of the Confederate States of America within the space of a few days. Jefferson Davis and the temporary Capital moved to the palatial home of William T. Sutherlin on April 3, 1865. It was in the Sutherlin home that Davis' issued his final Presidential Proclamation. The final Confederate Cabinet meeting was held at the Benedict House(destroyed) in Danville. Davis and members of his cabinet remained there until April 10, 1865, when news of Lee’s surrender forced them to flee southward. On the day of their departure, Governor William Smith arrived from Lynchburg, to establish his headquarters.
On July 22, 1882, six of Danville’s enterprising citizens founded the Riverside Cotton Mills, which today is known the country over as Dan River Inc., the largest single-unit textile mill in the world.
One of the most famous wrecks in American rail history occurred in Danville. On September 27, 1903, “Old 97,” the Southern Railway’s crack express mail train, was running behind schedule. Its engineer “gave her full throttle,” but the speed of the train caused it to jump the tracks on a high trestle overlooking the valley of the Dan. The engine and five cars plunged into the ravine below, killing nine and injuring seven, but immortalizing the locomotive and its engineer, Joseph A. ("Steve") Broadey, in a now well-known song. A marker is located on U.S. 58 between Locust Lane and North Main Street at the train crash site. A mural of the Wreck of the Old 97 is painted on a downtown Danville building in memory of the historic wreck.
On March 2, 1911, Danville Police Chief R. E. Morris, who had been elected to three two-year terms and was running for a fourth term, was arrested as an escaped convicted murderer. He admitted that he was really Edgar Stribling of Harris County, Georgia, and had been on the run for thirteen years.
Danville was home to both Nancy Langhorne, Viscountess Astor, the first woman to serve in the British House of Commons, and Irene Langhorne Gibson, the inspiration for "the Gibson girl". It is also the home of the very first and only black driver to win a race in what is now NASCAR's Sprint Cup, Wendell Scott, and was the birthplace of "Battling Jim" Johnson (b. ca. 1883), a boxer who fought heavyweight champion Jack Johnson to a draw in Paris, France in 1913.
APVA Preservation Virginia President William B. Kerkam, III, and its Executive Director Elizabeth S. Kostelny announced at a press conference held in Danville (2007) at Main Street Methodist Church, a building not designated to the list but nonetheless at risk, that the entire city of Danville has been named one of the Most Endangered Historic Sites in Virginia.
Civil Rights Movement in Danville
A series of violent episodes of the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia occurred in Danville during the summer of 1963. On May 31, representatives of the black community organized as the Danville Christian Progressive Association (DCPA) demanded an end to segregation and job discrimination in Danville. A boycott of white merchants was declared, and a march to City Hall followed. Most of the marchers were high school students. They were met by police and city workers armed with clubs. The protesters were sprayed with fire hoses and hit with clubs. Around forty protesters needed medical attention. Marches and other protests continued for several weeks. Martin Luther King, Jr. cam
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