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Mid-Lothian Mines Park News and Updates
IN THE NEWS:
07/12/16
Why the area around the Grove Shaft fenced off as a construction area, interrupting a major jogging route?
Thank you for your cooperation while we facilitate the removal of a 19th century pulley wheel. Photos taken from a ladder bucket over the Grove Shaft. The historic shaft, normally filled to the top with groundwater, is being pumped down to about fifty feet in order to facilitate the removal of a 19th century pulley wheel lodged in broken timbers. The pulley was discovered in 2010 when the VA Department of Environmental Quality loaned a submersible camera to the VA Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (DMME) to survey the old 625 foot deep shaft. The DMME has generously funded stabilization of the ruins and future construction and interpretive signs so that this important chapter of our nation’s early industrialization is adequately documented.
Here's the erected pulley wheel to the right.
10/15/15
Trail and Bridges Dedication Ceremony
Thursday, October 15, 2015 at 10 am.
at 13286 N. Woolridge Road, Midlothian, Va. 23114
Download Invite & Program
Press Release: 5/13/2015
Developer to donate 21-acre park along Woolridge Road.
A popular county park is set to grow with a donation from a developer, and plans are afoot to add amenities that could turn it into a major regional historical and recreational attraction.
“It’s always been the plan to give it to the county,” said Tom Garner, the owner-developer of the adjoining MillWorks at the Green office complex. He also provided the county with the land where Mid-Lothian Mines Park is located.
Read more of the story at the Chesterfield Observer, our local newspaper.
Thank you for your participation in the Amazing Raise.
10/18/12
Amphitheater Dedication
"Chesterfield Dedicates an Amphitheater to Honor Its Historic Coal Mines"
Listen to this WCVE-FM (NPR) news report with Charles Fishburne
Download the: Oct. 20, 2012 Amphitheater Dedication Program
Click here to learn the details about the new amphitheater and headstock being constructed on Woolridge Road, across from the park.
Watch this brief video to learn about the rich history of Chesterfield County, Virginia -- fueled, quite literally, by coal mining. Mid-Lothian Mines Park honors the area's past that represents the earliest systematic exploration of fossil fuel. On June 14, 2012, Tom Garner, a founder and president of the Mid-Lothian Mines & Rail Roads Foundation, led efforts to raise a 35-foot headstock reproduction. The headstock is an exact reproduction of the wooden support structure used on top of coal mines in the 18th century.