Signs of the times: Richmond’s highway markers recognize a rich history

Heciel Nieves Bonilla, Contributing Writer

Those who have driven or walked around the city of Richmond and the broader Commonwealth have likely seen some of the large white signposts, known as highway markers, that dot the sides of roads at a wide array of locations from grassy fields to dense city blocks.

Virginia is home to the oldest highway marker program in the nation, according to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Richmond is home to 104 of these signposts, denoting, among other things, the city’s Black history, Indigenous and colonial roots and its significance to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

Managed since 1927 by various now-defunct state agencies, today they are the responsibility of the Virginia DHR, headquartered in Richmond’s fan district near the Virginia Museum of History and Culture and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The department manages a database of all the markers in Virginia, which you can find on their website.

Jennifer Loux, the director of the Highway Marker Program, oversees the signposts’ placement and upkeep. She has worked on hundreds of markers in her time at the department.

“The purpose of the markers is to educate the public, linking stories about Virginia’s past to the landscape where they took place and providing a deeper understanding of the state’s rich history and cultural heritage,” Loux said.

Many markers Loux oversees point out lesser-known aspects and people of Richmond’s history, including some she points out as particularly interesting such as the James River Bateaumen, Mary Richards Bowser Denman, the British invasion of Richmond of 1781 and the Shockoe Hill African Burial Ground, which was only recently demarcated an official Richmond cemetery after decades of being built over.

However, the purpose of the markers is not to honor or celebrate the given subject, according to Loux.

Four blocks east of Monroe Park on Grace Street is a marker from 1989 denoting the death site of J.E.B. Stuart, a Confederate general. The marker is meant to offer context for the evolution of the city around it — the house of his brother-in-law mentioned by the marker is gone, and it is sandwiched between a car lot and a parking garage.

Some markers stand with visible evidence of their stories. On the sidewalk south of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Oregon Hill is a newer marker remembering Grace Evelyn Arents, a philanthropist who funded social programs and led urban reform in Richmond through the church and in her own capacity. The text lists her contributions, inviting the public to consider her legacy and that of the church it stands by.

Outside the city in Petersburg is one of Loux’s favorite markers, remembering the Readjuster Party — a biracial coalition of radical reformers and progressives that came into power in Virginia during Reconstruction, she said. The Readjusters abolished the poll tax, eliminated whipping as a punishment for crime and established what is now Virginia State University, according to the marker.

“It provides information about an important development in Virginia’s history that many people are not aware of,” Loux said.

This marker is one of dozens in Richmond and hundreds in Virginia that relate to Black history in the region. Jackson Ward alone holds 12 signs, a neighborhood with a long history of success as the “Harlem of the South” and a “Black Wall Street” in the early 20th century.

In Jackson Ward, the marker in front of the Black History Museum and Cultural Center on Leigh Street reveals the building’s original identity: “the First Battalion Virginia Volunteers Armory, the nation’s only 19th-century armory built for an African American militia.”

The latest highway marker to go up in Richmond was in 2024 for “Richmond’s First Municipal African Cemetery” on Broad Street under the train tracks and Interstate 95.

Ana Edwards, a public historian and assistant professor of African American studies at VCU, was involved with the original recognition of the Shockoe Bottom site on which the new marker lies and helped lead the push to preserve the site through the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project.

“Civic landscapes have long been intended to help residents and visitors have a sense of a people’s identity. Historic markers and public art help communicate the values and priorities associated with that identity,” Edwards said.

Markers that Edwards said were significant for the area’s Black history alongside the Shockoe burial markers include those remembering the execution of Gabriel — an enslaved blacksmith who attempted to lead a slave uprising — the Richmond 34, the Friends Asylum for Colored Orphans and the pedestrian “African Americans and the Waterfront” markers along the canal walk.

Edwards said she has continued to work to recognize historical sites in Shockoe Bottom and elsewhere and protect them from further destruction.

“If we seek to convey that we are a strong, multiracial, multiethnic, democratic and compassionate society that is honest about and proud of the struggles that have been engaged in the attempt to achieve the highest version of ourselves as people, region and nation, then our public history landscape should reflect that, in its complexities, so that we understand what has been achieved and what is yet to be realized,” Edwards said.

Edwards said people should make sure their past and future achievements are informed by how they keep public history.

“There’s great, rich history to know about Richmond, and its Black history is a deep, inseparable and inspirational part of it,” Edwards said.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article included an incomplete quote from Ana Edwards, public historian and African American studies professor. The full quote is now included.