Historic Routes to Monticello

1890 Charlottesville Land Company Map, showing several of the lost roads (dashed), Monticello Road and Avenue and Market Street (which still exist) and the path of Interstate 64. (Special Collections Library, University of Virginia via Scholars’ Lab). Click to enlarge.

For most of its history, it was easy to get to Monticello. There were multiple possible routes: through Woolen Mills, Carlton, present-day Monticello Road and present-day Route 20. There was busy commerce along all of these routes and there is enduring evidence—and local memories—of that. The advent of the automobile did not itself cause a disruption. During my earlier work studying Monticello Road, I met long-time residents who used to travel that route and I heard amusing stories of joyrides along the steep and winding road into town.

Construction of Interstate 64 in the 1960’s sliced between Charlottesville and Monticello, obliterating those old routes. The Woolen Mills/Carlton approaches exist in only on maps; Monticello Road is in two disconnected segments (one of which is completely disused) and the Monticello Avenue approach was widened to a four lane divided highway without sidewalk.

There was a flurry of institutional building at that same time, with the opening of Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) in 1973, the original regional visitor center (now PVCC Stultz Center) and the serial re-purposing of the Blue Ridge Hospital (ultimately mothballed in the 90’s). Since then, there has been steady growth south on Route 20 (including several subdivisions and a high school), but pedestrian access has not gotten easier...

This text is extracted from my pre-assessment report, Reconnecting Heritage: Pedestrian and Bicycle Connectivity to Monticello, The executive summary and full text of that report will be available soon.