Origins of Richmond

There was "no place so strong, so pleasant, and delightful in Virginia, for which we called it None-such." So wrote Captain John Smith about the site he chose in 1609 when he established the first English settlement near the falls of the James River. It stood a few miles south until 1610. William Byrd I founded the second settlement when he patented land here in 1676. He soon built a fortified community, trading post, and warehouses just across the river near the mouth of Goode Creek. In 1737 his son, William Byrd II, laid out Richmond--which he named for Richmond upon Thames, now a borough of London--here in the Shockoe valley.