Three Notch'd Road

Q-21

Also called Three Chopt Road, this colonial route ran from Richmond to the Shenandoah Valley. It likely took its name from three notches cut into trees to blaze the trail. A major east-west route across central Virginia from the 1730s, it was superseded by Route 250 in the 1930s. Part of Jack Jouett's famous ride and the Marquis de Lafayette's efforts to prevent Gen. Charles Cornwallis from obtaining munitions took place along this road. Today West Main Street and part of University Avenue approximate the Three Notch'd Road's original course through present-day Charlottesville.

Department of Historic Resources, 1999

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Harlan Page Lloyd, “The Battle of Waynesboro,” The Custer Reader, ed. Paul Andrew Hutton (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 78-29; Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., Charlottesville and the University of Virginia in the Civil War (Lynchburg: H. E. Howard Inc., 1988), 82-84; Katherine Smallwood, “The University of Virginia in the Civil War,” The Magazine of Albemarle County History, 29 (1971): 60-61.